


Sincerely, the Phoenix

by AuroraWest



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Family, Gen, One Big Happy Weasley Family, Post-Deathly Hallows, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-12-05 15:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 65,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11580693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraWest/pseuds/AuroraWest
Summary: Maybe good things can come from ashes. George and Angelina, and moving on.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Sincerely, the Phoenix' by The Ethnographers.
> 
> Rating is for one bad word in chapter 2. This is really a PG-rated fic.

“Ron, have we got any Boomslang Skin on order? Or possibly any laying about somewhere, in some supremely clever place which I’ve completely forgotten that I put it in?” George peered critically at the potion that was currently belching forth thick smoke of an ominous slick purplish-green colour. “A bit more of it and I think the Polypills’ll be just about ready—”

“If this is ‘just about ready’ I shudder to think of who’s testing your products.”

George whipped his head around at the voice. “Oh,” he said, “it’s you.”

“Oh, very nice, George Weasley. ‘Oh, it’s me’, indeed.” Angelina Johnson took a step into the tiny room that George referred to as the ‘laboratory’—always with a mad cackle—so she became more than just the slim silhouette she’d been against the better lighting outside. Her eyes were locked on the smoking potion. “Is that combustible?”

“Er, possibly. Most things seem to be, round here.” Somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice hissed at him that he should stand up to greet a woman—at least _this_ woman, Fred’s ex-girlfriend, or ex-fiancée, or whatever they’d been. Before the hissing could become full-blown shouting (and the little voice did have an uncanny resemblance to his mother’s), he did as it was suggesting, having to catch his chair by its back before it toppled over. In the normal course of things, he’d let the potion do whatever it was going to do, but the previous week that’d resulted in boils that exploded with neon orange pus—Ginny had snickered that they matched his hair—and that wasn’t something that he particularly relished inflicting on Angelina. So before they found out if it _was_ combustible, he pulled his wand from his back pocket and muttered, “ _Evanesco_.”

The potion disappeared, though the thick smoke lingered. Angelina waved a hand in front of her face, coughing and swiping at her eyes, which appeared to be watering. “How are you then, Weasley?”

“Corking, Johnson. Really smashing,” George deadpanned. “What brings you here? Haven’t you got training?” There was something in his voice that sounded standoffish, even to his own ears, and he resolved that the next words out of his mouth wouldn’t carry it. It was just—what did she mean by it, dropping in when he’d barely seen her since—well, in the last year and a half?

She crossed her arms over her chest like she was shielding herself from something—him, he thought with a start—and said, “You look it.” She eyed him. “You don’t look so lopsided now.”

“You must be used to my saintly side.” He paused to give her an opening to react to that. She didn’t. “And thanks, I think. How are you?”

She only shrugged and, without looking at him, took another step inside and turned to study the walls. They were lined with rickety shelves that were piled high with supplies and half-finished inventions. “What was that potion, anyway?”

George watched her straight back as she read handwritten labels. “It was supposed to be a less potent version of Polyjuice Potion. Polypills, we’re calling them. Ten different faces and you’ll never know which one you’ll get. I keep trying to convince Harry to let us use his but he seems oddly averse to the idea.”

“Whose faces are you using, then?” she asked suspiciously.

“Oh, you know, celebrities. We’re tweaking each one, though, so you’ll get Shacklebolt with a mohawk, or Viktor Krum with pink hair.” For another moment, he watched her. “We’re still debating You-Know-Who with a pig snout and purple beehive hair-do. Ron and Harry think it’s a laugh; Hermione says it’s too soon.” That had been the general breakdown as far as You-Know-Who products had gone since the Battle when he solicited advice from his friends. George knew that he and Ron were taking their revenge in the only way they really could. The mockery didn’t ease the pain of losing Fred all that much, but George sought refuge in laughter, because he felt closest to his absent twin then. Anyway, it was who he was—he laughed so hard he cried sometimes, and on the day of Fred’s funeral he’d cried so hard he’d laughed, and it had seemed completely _apropros_. Fred would’ve appreciated it, anyway. He’d got mixed reactions from his family, though even Mum had given him a watery smile in the end and clung to him and called him her brave boy, and he’d said, “I dunno about that, Mum,” and in his head he’d gone on _I only lost an ear, Fred went and lost his whole bloody life just like Uncles Gideon and Fabian_.

Angelina turned around with an appreciative expression on her face. “I think I agree with Ron and Harry.”

“Yeah? Want to be a tester?” He was only half joking.

“You know, believe it or not, I make good money with this whole Quidditch thing. I’m not really looking for any extra work.”

George studied her for a moment. She looked good in that way that people who desperately wanted everyone to think they were fine looked—and Angelina pulled it off better than most, casually gorgeous even in jeans and a sweatshirt. She was wearing her hair longer these days, and natural, so that it fell around her face and shoulders in tight, unruly ringlets. But there was a look in her eyes, a buried grief that he recognised from his own attempts to do the same with his own grief, that spoke volumes. To him, at least, but then he’d been her friend for over a decade, and she’d been the first one at Hogwarts who could tell them apart (she’d learnt the difference on the train whilst he and Fred had shared a compartment with her and Lee). Anyway, she didn’t fool him.

And she’d never said how she was.

Angelina cleared her throat. “The shop looks really good, by the way. I’ve um, I’ve come in now and then.”

“Stop and say hello sometime, then, will you?” George said, feeling a bit daft the minute the words were out of his mouth. That was what she was doing, wasn’t it?

Angelina shifted on her feet. “Well, that’s what I’m doing, isn’t it?”

“S’pose so.” He paused, a pause which turned into an hesitation, and then he said, “Angelina, I can’t help thinking maybe I should have—you know—seen you sometime.” 

This came out sounding so stupid and inadequate that he almost added a very un-Weasley-twin-esque stuttered addendum to the end of it, but Angelina just shrugged. “You’ve seen me. Anyway it’s not as though I can’t handle it, George.”

_It._ Right. That little detail of Fred being dead and gone. Fred had made it clear that he was ready to stop messing about with Angelina’s feelings; that when the war was over he was going to marry her; that they’d already talked, the two of them, and come to some sort of understanding. George still remembered the funny look that Fred had got on his face after they’d all managed to escape the Death Eaters at the end of Bill and Fleur’s wedding, when Fred had remarked, “You know, it’s the strangest thing, but none of Fleur’s cousins are half so pretty as Angelina.” Privately, George had agreed—still did—but out loud he’d said, “Spell-addled, are you?”

“No. I mean, yeah.” George shook himself. “I mean, you look really good, Ange.” That just made it sound as though he was expecting her not to. “As always.” He didn’t generally find himself stumbling over his own words, or at a loss for what to say, or nursing a tendency for babbling. Suddenly, faced with Angelina Johnson, he was afflicted by all three. “Hey, I’m a bit busy at the minute, but do you want to—I dunno, grab a pint at the Leaky Cauldron sometime? Catch up?”

He’d felt certain that this was a safe question—she, after all, had come to him; made the effort to find him all the way in the back of the shop—so he was shocked to see her turn pale. “Er, maybe.” Her voice sounded odd. Strained. “I’m—er—quite busy, you know; Quidditch, but I’ll...well, maybe.”

Now he was just confused. “Why did you stop by, again, Angelina?”

There was a look on her face that was half frightened. “Just to say hello.” She took a step back towards the door and glanced over her shoulder. “Anyway, George, I’ve got to go. Er—nice seeing you.”

Before he could return the sentiment, she’d whirled and departed, and he was too bewildered by her completely confusing behaviour to do anything but stare at the now empty doorway.

After a second, Ron poked his head into the laboratory—insert mad cackle—his eyebrows raised at George. “What did Angelina want?”

George’s brow stayed furrowed as he answered, “I’ve no idea.”

 

* * *

 

In some ways, George Weasley was better than people thought he was. It had been one year, seven months, and five days since Fred had died, and he’d actually had to glance at a calendar to come up with the exact count, which he supposed was a good sign. He’d stopped drinking so much. He socialised with his friends—better than socialising with strangers, anyway, which he’d frequently done when he’d been consuming vastly larger amounts of Firewhiskey than were advisable. 

People seemed to think he couldn’t bear to hear Fred’s name mentioned, as though somehow he’d forgotten his brother was dead and by reminding him they’d send him into a downward spiral of grief. He’d shouted himself hoarse at Alicia Spinnet on the subject one of the times she’d started a sentence with ‘Fr—” and then immediately stopped, looking horrified. Those vast amounts of Firewhiskey had been involved. Eventually Oliver Wood had intervened, threatening to punch George in the face if he didn’t shut his effing mouth, a threat which George had taken very seriously, as Wood’s massive fist had suddenly appeared at his eye level. The next morning he’d shown up at Alicia’s flat with flowers (Hermione’s suggestion) and an apology; Alicia had hugged him and said, “Fred probably wouldn’t want us pretending he hadn’t existed.”

This was true. On their twentieth birthday they had, for the first time, considered the fact that they might die. That one of them might die. And that the other would have to go on living. “Make sure there are prettily weeping Veelas at my funeral,” George had said, “but keep Mum from crying too much.”

“Likewise,” Fred had replied. “And I’ll need fireworks. Loads and loads of fireworks. If the bloody Death Eaters destroyed the stock then hold off the funeral till you can make more. Think you can put on my headstone, ‘Sorry girls, you’ll have to make do with George’?”

It had been both amusing and terrifying, and then amusing again as their funeral requests mounted in absurdity, but underneath the conversation there’d been a palpable current of prayer that each of them wasn’t the left-behind twin.

The fireworks he’d managed. Hopefully Fleur, her mother, and sister had been good enough for prettily weeping Veelas. They _had_ all wept very prettily. More prettily than George, for sure.

Sometimes he wondered if Fred would have handled all of it better. He didn’t think so. 

“She drinks a lot, you know.” Ginny’s voice jolted George back to the present and he looked at his sister, startled. This was, in fact, news to him. So he and Johnson had something in common. Or she had something in common with twenty-year-old George. Twenty-one-year-old George was the very picture of sobriety. Ginny had threatened him with her Bat-Bogey Hex, which hadn’t overly troubled him. Then Harry had said she’d found some way of making it longer-lasting. That hadn’t much troubled him, either, as he was one-third into a bottle of Firewhiskey at the time. Then Harry had sat down, moved the bottle out of the way, and said in a way that had made him listen, “George, you’ve got to stop this.” 

And he had. Not all at once, but somehow, in Harry’s insistence that he understood, there was something that rang truer than everyone else’s. Stupid, really. All his siblings had lost a brother as well. But there it was.

“Angelina?” Harry asked. “No way. She was always so...”

“Mental?” George supplied.

“I was going to say driven.”

The three of them were lounging in Harry’s sitting room—George pointedly pretending not to notice the fact that Ginny’s personal effects were scattered throughout Grimmauld Place—drinking Butterbeers, each of them relaxing after their respective long days. It was about a week after the odd encounter with Angelina, and he’d mentioned it off-handedly, knowing Ginny was the one amongst them who’d the most contact with her.

“Yeah, well.” Ginny glanced at George sidelong and hesitated before saying, “She took Fred’s death really hard.”

Gesturing towards her with his mug of Butterbeer, George commented, “You don’t need to tiptoe round the subject, Gin, it’s not going to shatter me. I know he’s dead.”

Ginny glared at him. “I’m so glad to hear you say that _now_.”

Harry held up a hand for peace between the siblings. “How do you know how Angelina took—it?” he asked Ginny.

Pursing her lips and giving George a speculative look, she answered, “I _see_ her drinking. And I assumed it was Fred.”

“Because you walked in on them at Auntie Muriel’s,” George remarked.

Ginny leant back into the couch. “He was just lucky it was _me_ that walked in and not Mum or Auntie Muriel. Honestly, bringing girls _there_.”

Harry guffawed and George caught his eye with a grin. “I’m glad someone could find—er—some happiness back then,” the younger man snorted. “Where were you?” he asked George.

Taking a swig of Butterbeer, George replied, “In the kitchen trying to keep Mum and Auntie Muriel from going upstairs. That one couldn’t stop giggling madly when she came down.”

“To get over the revulsion,” Ginny said, though she was smiling. “Knowing that your brothers get up to things in bed—”

“You want to word that more carefully or you’ll make people think Percy and I’ve got something going on,” George interjected.

Ginny made a disgusted face but finished, “—is not the same as knowing _what_ they get up to in bed, and who with.”

“Likewise,” George said, then, looking at Harry, added, “Though I assume my sister hasn’t got up to anything in said apparatus.”

Harry looked frozen for a second and Ginny snapped, “Oh, shut it.”

With a grin, George said, “Just my joke, Harry. Anyway, it’s better this way; I’ve known you since you were eleven so there aren’t many character flaws you’ve kept hidden.”

“At least they’re out in the open,” Harry said dryly.

“Exactly! Saves a lot of tedious checks into your background.”

Harry put up with this ribbing with a good-natured grimace, as he always had. Then he said musingly, “I never realised Fred was serious about anyone.”

George shrugged. “He wasn’t till that year. You know, war-time romance or whatever.” He’d had no such thing himself. For awhile at school he’d gone out with Katie Bell, but there’d always been more friendship there than anything else and it had just sort of ended, no hard feelings on either side. There’d been a few girls since then, but none after he’d lost the ear. There wasn’t anyone worth the worry—him worrying about her, that was, and her worrying about him.

Ginny said, a bit sadly, “I always try to say hello or get her to come round for dinner sometime, but Angelina’s very…” She hesitated, searching for the right words, and George wondered whose benefit that was for. “Well, she’s very closed off. Friendly, but distant.” Then, she added thoughtfully, “I wonder why she came to see you, George?”

“We used to be friends.” George had wondered the same thing and had really hoped Ginny would shed some light on it.

“Used to be,” Ginny said pointedly. “Maybe it wouldn’t have been the worst thing if you’d kept being her friend.”

“Merlin, you’re making me feel a bit guilty for not looking in on her.” As though he hadn’t already felt guilty. Every time he saw her, he felt that little twinge. But it was hard.

Rolling her eyes, Ginny said, “Catching on, I see. But she’s not a convalescent, George. _Looking in on her_ , honestly.”

“A bloke tries to say the right thing,” George sighed, looking to Harry for support, who shrugged and looked at Ginny with such gloopy adoration that George had to glance away or risk being sick.

“Well, you know we’re playing Ballycastle next week,” Ginny said. “You could come to one of my games for once and ‘look in on her’ while you’re at it.”

“Maybe I will,” George said. “I hear you’re halfway decent.”

“What would I do without brothers to keep me humble?”

“I dunno, but I shudder to think of the state of your ego if you didn’t.”

“Did you want to have dinner with us?” Ginny asked pointedly. “Keep this up and you won’t be.”

George grinned. “My stomach would never forgive me.”

“God forbid _that_ relationship sours.”

Getting to his feet and stretching, Harry said, “Yeah, and it’s Chinese takeaway night, so you don’t want her kicking you out. The eggrolls at that place in Diagon Alley aren’t very good.”

“No, they’re rubbish, actually,” George agreed.

Shrugging on a jacket, Harry asked, “Gin, do you want the Singapore noodles?”

“Please. Thanks, love,” she said, shooting him a bright smile.

“Want company, Harry?” George asked.

Harry grinned. “That’s all right. You’ll want to work out where we’re meeting Ginny after her game next week.”

“Absolutely no male solidarity,” George grumbled.

There was something absurd about the hero of the Second Wizarding War walking down the road to get Chinese takeaway. And he did it _sans_ wand, though George could see him hesitate over leaving it. But he did, to prove that he could—probably as much to himself as anybody else. Two years ago no one would have dared leave their house without a wand, and it had been getting pretty near the point where most blood-traitors barely dared leave the house at all. And forget Halfbloods and Muggleborns—if they’d been smart they’d gone into hiding. Come to think of it, he seemed to recall Angelina mentioning her parents staying in St Kitt’s. It was one of the days they’d done Potterwatch together, and as they’d sat in the dark room, curtains drawn over all the windows, waiting for Lee to come back from having a smoke, she’d told him in a desperately casual voice that her parents were after her to join them there.

He’d taken a swig of the Butterbeer they were sharing between them and asked, “Are you going to?”

She’d shaken her head vehemently. “How can I?” He’d just nodded. She couldn’t. The same way he and Fred couldn’t just sit in Auntie Muriel’s attic and hide. The same way Lee had quit his job at the WWN and was risking everything running Potterwatch. The same way hundreds of witches and wizards were resisting in whatever small ways they could. Then she’d picked up the Butterbeer and held it to her lips, before lowering it and saying, “Don’t tell Fred, yeah? I dunno if he’d want me to go or stay. And I don’t know which one I _want_ him to want.”

George had crossed his heart with a finger. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

He hadn’t a clue if she’d ever told Fred. He’d always wondered why she’d told _him_. Maybe she’d known he’d only ask what she meant to do.

The idea that she’d told him something that she didn’t want to tell Fred; the realisation of the friendship that had existed between Angelina and him which had lapsed, and probably when both of them needed it most, made him cross his arms over his chest and give Ginny a measuring look. “All right then,” he said, “I’ll come. Get me a ticket?”

Ginny rolled her eyes but smiled, and nodded.

 

* * *

 

The match was hard fought, but in the end the Harpies won by eighty points, their Seeker scooping up the Snitch in a blur of green just inches ahead of the Bats’ Seeker, who pulled up out of her dive looking murderous. George, Harry, and Ron imitated some of the more spectacular moments from the match as they strolled towards the changing rooms, where Ginny had said she’d meet them outside of. Then George turned to mimicking Ron’s imitations, which caused his brother to turn beet red and take a swipe at him (some things never changed, he couldn’t help musing). He wondered if Angelina would actually be there, and that made him wonder if he shouldn’t act slightly more like the supposed adult that he was. 

Ginny’d said she’d try and find Angelina but had cautioned in the same breath that Ange had a tendency to rush off. George could understand that. There’d been a not-so-distant time of his life when he’d had the same tendency, because sometimes one’s supposed friends set a mob of eager and well-meaning acquaintances on one, and no matter how well-meaning they were, it was all too much. But, he reminded himself, he was doing this because it was the right thing, because Angelina was supposed to be his mate. And sometimes your mates needed a kick in the arse. He certainly had.

As they rounded a corner in the corridor, George fell back behind Ron and Harry slightly. Ginny and Angelina were standing outside the visiting team’s changing room, chatting easily. Ginny had changed into ordinary clothes, but Angelina was still in her black and red Quidditch robes. As the three of them approached, Angelina turned and looked their way, saying delightedly as she saw them, “Harry, Ron!” and striding over to snake their hands enthusiastically in greeting. Ginny rushed to embrace Harry—maybe the other way around—and the two of them shared a kiss. George kept his own hands in his pockets for a moment but then raised one in greeting as Angelina’s eyes fell on him. For a second, she didn’t do anything but give him that same half-frightened look that she had two weeks ago, but then she seemed to shake herself and offered him a small smile. “Hullo, George,” she said.

He’d never seen her up close in her Ballycastle robes and so he’d never seen how confident and poised she looked in them. If anyone had ever questioned her career path, they only needed to look at her now to see she’d chosen the right one. “Nice game,” he said in response.

She snorted dismissively and shrugged, “Words better suited to your sister.”

“Oh, he’d never say any such thing to me,” Ginny said without rancour.

George stepped over to her and lifted her right off her feet in a massive hug. “Magnificent flying!” he cried grandiosely before returning her to the ground and Harry’s arm slung casually round her shoulders. He had to look away from the warm look that Ginny was giving him, knowing that he probably hadn’t fooled anyone with his extravagance.

Angelina looked genuinely pleased to see Harry and Ron, bombarding them with questions about what they’d been doing since she last saw them. Of course no one actually said the words ‘since I last saw you’, since for all intents and purposes, the last time the three of them had really seen each other was at a funeral. It was always an awkward conversation, that first one after the mutually experienced funeral. George thought he’d got most of them behind him but occasionally he’d run into someone—it had been Ernie MacMillan last month—whom he just hadn’t seen, and then there was always that _moment_ as both parties thought back and recalled when the last time they’d spoken had been. 

She seemed fascinated by Harry’s Auror training, though winced sympathetically at the idea of three extra years of training before the qualification exams. George let his mind wander, keeping his eyes on Angelina’s face whilst considering whether to introduce the new Daydream Charms now or to wait until the spring. Ideally he’d have liked to have got them out several weeks earlier so they’d have had a full Christmas season to sell, but WWW would most likely recoup a good part of the R&D costs just by having them available for Christmas—

“And I suppose there’s never a dull moment at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes,” cut across his reverie. Angelina was addressing Ron, but he caught a quick flicker of a glance in his direction.

“When he’s got me doing the ledgers it’s plenty dull,” Ron replied.

George snorted. “You can be demoted to sweeping, if you’d rather. Your maths are pretty rubbish, anyway.”

Angelina looked like she’d been startled, against her will, into a smile. “ _You’ve_ not learnt how to be nice, still, I see,” she commented to George.

Waving a dismissive hand, Ron said, “If he wasn’t a tosser I’d know there was something seriously wrong with him.”

“ _More_ seriously wrong, as the case may be,” Ginny said with a smile.

Putting a hand to his heart and rolling his eyes dramatically ceiling-wards, George said, “What incentive have I got to be nice when I put up with such abuse?”

“Don’t let them fool you,” Harry remarked to Angelina.

“No,” she said, sounding amused, “I don’t.”

“Any plans for Christmas?” Harry asked her.

Her eyes swept over them, Weasleys and Potter-who-may-as-well-have-been-one, and she said, “Just a quiet day with my parents, probably.” George could practically hear her thoughts—or maybe they were his own—if things had been different she’d probably be spending this Christmas at the Burrow with a wedding ring already on her finger. To her credit, she showed none of this on her face. But that was Angelina, wasn’t it? Never one to be overly emotional, that was her. He’d never have blamed her for showing her hand, though. 

Again, her gaze flickered towards George, but she asked Harry, “You? Spending it with this lot, I imagine?”

“Probably my godson and his grandmother as well,” Harry nodded. Ginny looked delighted by this, as though she hadn’t heard yet.

“I didn’t know you had a godson,” Angelina remarked. Detectable in her tone was the skirting of the issue of where this godson’s parents were. That was a type of tact everyone had had to learn in the last year and a half.

Harry’s eyes positively lit up. “Yeah, he’s going on two in April, but he’s already doing magic—little things, you know, but he did manage to get his sippy cup to fly across the room the other day when he wasn’t supposed to be having any more juice. Oh, and he’s a Metamorphmagus, gets that from his mum; supposedly he’s been doing that since practically the minute he was born—”

“Angelina, have you got three hours?” George asked. “Because get Harry started on Teddy and that’s _easily_ how long he can expound on the subject.”

“It’s sweet,” Ginny assured him, kissing his cheek. Then she fixed her eye on Angelina, and George wondered what, exactly, his sister had in store, because he knew that look very well and it normally meant that something was being planned for someone that they may not like, though Ginny would well go on that it was for their own good. “George and Ron are having a bit of a Christmas party at the shop this week; you should come along.”

This party was news to George, and judging by the startled glance that Ron threw at Ginny, it was him as well. He was tempted to say that they’d changed the location to Ginny’s flat so she’d be the one forced to arrange a party that no one had been planning on, but he needn’t have worried, because Angelina immediately shook her head. “Oh, thank you, but I’m busy; can’t come, I’m afraid…”

“You’re busy all week?” Ginny asked. “The week before Christmas? You could just pop by, surely?”

Angelina’s demeanor changed so rapidly that George seriously considered, for a moment, whether she mightn’t have been switched out for someone else, and he’d missed it while he blinked. Where before she’d been easy and relaxed—enough; George could still tell she wasn’t entirely—she became suddenly tense, stammering out something about maybe extra training, not to mention Christmas shopping, and before any of them could so much as say, “Happy Christmas, anyway,” she’d vanished into the changing room.

For a moment, the four of them stood there, as though a sudden, violent storm had just passed by. Then, Harry said, “You know, George, I reckon you’re right. Angelina _might_ be mental.”

 

* * *

 

With Christmas over, life settled into dreary winter rains and much use of Mum’s annual jumper. It was a cold January, and the heating at 93 Diagon Alley had always been a bit dodgy. George vowed to have it repaired, or maybe replaced, depending on the cost. Lee told him he just needed someone to keep him warm at night, but Lee was full of tidbits of this nature since he’d started going out with Morag MacDougal. George had told him to shove it, which had been unfair, but Lee had shrugged it off.

Christmas itself had been better than the previous year. Mum hadn’t burst into tears once. Percy had brought his girlfriend, Audrey Wells. Fleur looked even more radiant pregnant, a feat which had prompted Hermione to remark in a low tone to Ron, George, Harry, and Ginny, “She’s going to make the rest of us look bad,” at which point Ron had turned a delicate shade of green. Not that he was fooling anybody—it was plain as the hole in George’s head that Ron and Hermione were headed for matrimonial bliss, though George couldn’t blame Ron for objecting to pregnancy being brought into the conversation so early. Luckily Hermione had noticed and said, “Honestly, Ron—it was a _joke_.”

Maybe the best part of Christmas was that George had refrained from biting anyone’s head off, which he’d done the previous year for no real reason other than that he was angry and lonely and grieving. Percy had borne the brunt of it, as George had spewed every last hateful thing he’d thought about his older brother in the past seven months—that he’d been with Fred when he’d died, that they’d had to lose Fred to get Percy back and that George would’ve kept Fred, thanks very much. He’d stayed up hours later than everyone else scrubbing mashed parsnips out of the wood floor, and he’d done it without magic because it had felt right to do so, because there was no spell to clean up the mess of his life.

Percy had joined him just past one o’clock in the morning. “Perce—” George had begun, well sobered up by that point, but Percy had waved a hand for him to shut it, and he had. “Think I haven’t thought the same things?” Percy finally asked, sounding like he was choking a bit.

“I don’t really think those things,” George had said quietly.

Percy’d looked at him. “I know.”

They’d been much closer since then.

It was lunchtime now, and George had braved the damp chill of the January day to walk to the Leaky Cauldron for some of Tom’s infamous pea soup. He scooped up the steaming bowl with one hand and his pumpkin juice with the other. Food in hand, he headed towards the quieter end of the Leaky Cauldron. There’d been a time in his life where he’d’ve wanted to be in the centre of things, to make sure he was seen and particularly heard; it was publicity for the shop and he enjoyed it besides. These days, though, he just wanted to eat a quiet lunch. Helped that he’d left his magenta robes back at the shop in favour of something more understated. Some days he went back but Ron had noted that when he did that, he didn’t exactly take any kind of lunch hour, it was more eating as he walked round, and the day he’d accidentally left pea soup close enough for the Pygmy Puffs to get at it—well, the offspring they’d produced after that had been interesting, but neither George nor Ron thought they were going to be the next craze in magical pets.

As he made his way to his favourite corner, a dark head of hair buried behind a _Daily Prophet_ caught his eye, and he veered sharply towards it. “All right, Johnson?” he asked casually.

Angelina abruptly laid the paper down on the table, looking surprised to be addressed. “Oh,” she said, “it’s you.” Quickly, she added, “Tom normally puts some sort of charm around the table so no one will bother me.”

“Right, you being a famous Quidditch player and all.” George stood in front of her. “I’d know that head anywhere, though. No charm of Tom’s is going to fool me.”

There was a wary expression on Angelina’s face. “Do you come here often?” she asked.

“Every once in awhile,” he drawled. A smile twitched at the corner of her lips and George took that as a good an invitation as any to sit down, which he did. “I’ve been ejected from my own shop for the time it takes me to eat my lunch.”

“I’m shocked you’d let Ron do that.”

George dipped his spoon into the soup and took a swallow of it, then answered, “I’m getting more amenable in my old age.”

She closed the _Prophet_ and gave him that small smile again. “You were always amenable, George.”

“Yeah?” he asked.

Watching him eat his pea soup for a minute, she said, “I always thought you were easier-going than Fred.”

“One of us had to be. Pure accident that it was me, I assure you.” 

He was surprised she’d brought Fred up first. Then again if he was going to be brought up it certainly wouldn’t have been by George; he could never quite forget the expression on her face at the funeral, like that presence, that sense of self, that quintessentially Angelina Johnson spark and fire in her eyes had gone out.

There was a cup of pumpkin juice at her elbow, which she picked up and drank from. Hiding her discomfort? Anyway it troubled him a bit, looking her in the eye here and now, because that spark and fire didn’t seem to have found its way back entirely. Merlin, Fred gone a year and a half. He hated to think about anyone living even remotely like him through all those months. 

Noticing the clean plate at her other elbow, he cracked a smile and said, “You know, one of these days we should actually go out and spend some proper time together, instead of fifteen minute intervals.”

There was a flash in her eyes, almost like the Angelina of yore. “Going somewhere, are you?”

“Told you, Ron wants me out while I eat. And I see you’ve already enjoyed your lunch. Don’t imagine you’ll be hanging round much longer.”

She looked to the empty plate, like she’d forgotten about eating at all. “You take time off, then? You never used to.”

“Well, things are a bit more settled now. Ron can handle them.” He paused to think before adding fairly, “And Verity’s been there so long that she could probably run the place better than Ron or me, anyway.” If she thought he hadn’t noticed her neat circumvention of an answer just there, then she had another think coming. “So what do you say; have lunch with me sometime? Say next week?”

“Mm,” she said noncommittally, sipping at her pumpkin juice again. “How was your Christmas?”

“It was good; Fleur finally got Mum to switch off Celestina Warbeck when she faked contractions, but if that’s what it takes to keep old Celestina quiet in our house, Fleur’s figure is really going to take a beating.” George fixed her with an even stare. “Are you going to answer me or not?”

Looking startled, she asked, “Sorry?”

“Lunch. Next week. Whatever day you’re free; I’ll make time.” George watched her brow knit. “It’s an easy question. You say it like this: yes. Or no. Whichever you prefer.”

Bitterness didn’t sound good on Angelina, but that was exactly the tone of her sharp exhalation. “It’s not an easy question,” she muttered, almost too low for him to hear. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” she said.

At that, George let his frustration at her evasiveness get the better of him. “Bloody hell, Angelina, if you’ve got a problem with me then just say it,” he snapped.

She jumped to her feet, her chair scraping on the floor as it almost toppled over, and he cursed himself for saying the wrong thing. “I should go,” she blurted. 

“Ange—” he began, but she was already halfway to the door. For half a second he debated following her, and then he leapt up as well, dodging tables and chairs until he caught up with her just outside on the other side of the entrance to Diagon Alley. “Ange, wait a minute!” She was close enough that he could have grabbed her arm but he was pretty sure she’d punch him if he tried. Mercifully, she stopped and turned around to look at him. He just stared at her for a moment. “What’s going on with you?” _And me,_ he could have added, but that implied that there was a she and him, which there was most definitely not.

She stared him down but he didn’t blink, being well used to her states of high dudgeon from Hogwarts. Finally, she sighed, her shoulders drooped, and she took several steps away from the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron, to a spot more hidden from view and where people weren’t staring as much. He supposed a certain amount of staring was to be expected—she, after all, _was_ a famous Quidditch player, centre Chaser for the Ballycastle Bats and fairly brilliant at it, and he wasn’t unknown himself, though he preferred the admiration of the wizardlings and witchlets in the shop to being known as one of the Heroes of the Battle of Hogwarts. After another long moment, she sighed in frustration. “Have you got any idea how—how _scary_ it is looking at you?” Angelina demanded.

George pretended not to know what she meant. “Scary? Me? Wrong Weasley. You’re thinking of my mum, or possibly Ginny.” Then, because he could see how much the admission had cost her, he sighed. “Yeah, Ange. I know. And yet we keep running into each other.” Strictly speaking, this wasn’t exactly true, as one of those occasions had been planned, but it was fair to assume that they _would_ run into each other. It was fair to say that they _had_ , in the past year and a half. So what if they’d left their interactions to a mumbled hello and then an awkward good-bye? For the love of God, _she_ had come into the shop to talk to him. He’d have loved to chalk it up to women in general, but he’d a feeling this was an Angelina-specific issue.

“The Wizarding world isn’t a big place,” she mumbled, not meeting his eyes.

For a minute, he let her act like a prat, refusing to look at him when she obviously wanted to. “Hey, Angelina. Just say what you want to say.”

She kept up her prattish behaviour for another minute or two, and then, finally, she looked at him, drew a deep breath, and said in a rush, “You’re not Fred.”

“Cor blimey,” he said in a flat tone. “Really? Why haven’t I been told before now?” She looked gutted by his sarcasm, and he immediately felt guilty. “Ange—sorry.”

Her arms were crossed over her chest again in that now-familiar shielding gesture. He really wished she didn’t feel the need to do that around him. Then again, maybe he didn’t make it easy for her. Certainly he hadn’t just a minute ago. “Merlin help me, George, I actually _missed_ seeing you. I lost Fred for good and then I lost _you_ , except you’re right here and I thought we could be friends, even though—even though you—” She didn’t finish the sentence, but George knew what she meant— _even though you look just like Fred_. He supposed he didn’t blame her, really. He hadn’t much choice; it was his own face and he had to get used to seeing his dead brother every day, but he knew how she felt; he’d been terrified to look in the mirror for a full week after the Battle. Stupid really, it’d never been out of his mind that Fred was dead, but somehow his reflection had made it worse. He’d got over it. Angelina didn’t need to.

“That’s why I came to see you,” she said, sounding miserable. “I thought I should be able to be a normal person; get on with my life, see my mates, you know? Except I got in there and I couldn’t, George. I looked at you and all I could see was Fred, and that’s… _pathetic_ , isn’t it?”

“Not really,” George said in a feeble attempt at levity.

Luckily, she just ignored it. “It’s not fair. To you, I mean. It’s terrible of me. You don’t deserve that.”

She looked as though she was going to go on, but then she met his eyes and her expression twisted into something close to self-loathing—too close to it, as far as George was concerned. “I don’t blame you,” he said. Her expression twitched. “Look, I get it. I do. Mad as it sounds it was sort of the same for me.” He thought about reaching out and touching her shoulder but didn’t. There would’ve been something of the absurd in his inability to take a hint. “I think—I mean, I’d like to be friends again, Ange. But I get it. Too soon. Maybe it’ll always be too soon.”

The self-loathing melted from Angelina’s face. “I hope it isn’t, George. I really do.”

And he didn’t say it, because he could feel that it was time to let her walk away, but he did, too.


	2. Chapter 2

“These sorts of things were loads more fun to go to before Fred died,” George said, grimacing at his reflection. He could never decide whether or not to wear his green dragonhide jacket, but without it his shirt and tie looked too formal and too blasé.

“Thanks,” Ron said with a roll of his eyes as he straightened his tie.

“No offence.” Yeah, he definitely needed the jacket. “Oy, Ron, chuck me my jacket, will you?”

“None taken,” Ron said first, and then reached across himself to grab the lurid dragonhide jacket and commented, as he tossed it, “You could’ve just Summoned it.”

George shrugged it on and said, “It would’ve hit you in the face but I’ll remember that next time.”

“Oh, so it was just consideration for me.”

“Ron, when have I ever _not_ been considerate of you?”

With a snort that was answer enough, Ron asked, “Ready to go?”

George grabbed his wand from the table, twirled it in his fingers, and stuck it in his back pocket. “Ready.”

The two of them clattered down the stairs, through the shop, and out the door, George making sure that it was locked behind them. Wouldn’t do for mischief to be made in the mischief headquarters of magical Britain by anyone other than the proprietors, after all.

“So what’s the book at this release party, anyway?” Ron asked as they walked. One of the perks of owning the most successful joke shop in Britain, and being headquartered in Diagon Alley, was the onslaught of invitations to high profile, wine-and-hors-d'oeuvre events attended by the Wizarding glitterati. The novelty had yet to wear off for Ron, although it was beginning to for George. But he went because he’d made plenty of useful contacts at these things, and besides, he wasn’t one to turn down free food and booze.

George pulled out the card he’d received in the post and read it. “ _Swimming With Sirens: One Man’s Year with the Merfolk_ , by Alfie Flumineus.” Raising an eyebrow at his younger brother, he asked, “How d’you reckon he spent a year underwater without turning completely pruny?”

“Dunno.” Ron mulled this over. “We should ask Harry if gillyweed keeps you getting wrinkly.”

“Still, eating gillyweed on the hour for a year...well, you’d get sick of it, wouldn’t you?”

“You wouldn’t be able to sleep,” Ron pointed out. “You’d have to eat it every hour to keep from drowning.”

With a thoughtful look, George remarked, “Maybe we’ll have to read the book.” Then, considering that for another moment, he said, “Nah,” drawing a sound of agreement from Ron. “Say,” George began, “is Harry going to be there? He’s as much a celebrity as I am.”

“You?” Ron asked in a disgruntled tone.

“You’re right, he’s probably just _slightly_ more famous. The Chosen Boy Who Lived and Saved Us All or whatever he’s called these days.”

“Dunno. He was awfully cagey when I asked about it.”

“I like to think of that as Ginny-induced cageyness. My response is generally not to discuss it any further.”

“Good plan,” Ron said. “What we don’t know can’t hurt us.”

The two of them entered the Leaky Cauldron, but instead of stopping for a pint as they usually did, they exited straightaway into Muggle London. The address on the invitation brought them to an alley at the back of a small, dingy, unassuming antiquarian bookshop, with a door that opened onto a small corridor behind it. A door led to a staircase, which they ascended to the fifth storey of the building, where the stairs opened onto a single, large loft, obviously magically expanded to occupy far more space than the building could provide.

The loft was already full of people and loud voices echoed loudly off its bare brick walls. Wine and beer were flowing freely, with uniformed wait-staff circulating with libations and hors-d'oeuvre on offer. “Wish they’d serve a proper meal at these things,” Ron grumbled as three or four deviled eggs disappeared rapidly into his mouth.

George’s first priority was alcohol, not food, and he quickly acquired a glass of wine for himself, while Ron chose beer. “Wonder where old Alfie is?” Ron mused.

“Dunno; I’ve never seen the man.”

Suddenly, a voice behind them caught their attention. “Ahem, Mr Weasley and Mr Weasley, can I ask you both a couple of questions about what it’s like running the shop that brought business back to Diagon Alley?”

They turned around, George intending to inform what was surely another _Daily Prophet_ vulture that she could take her questions and stick them somewhere specific and impolite, but then his eyes fell on— 

“Parvati Patil!” Ron exclaimed, hugging her.

George shook her hand, remarking, “They say that about us, do they?”

Parvati straightened her large, dangling chandelier earrings, smiling widely. “They do, but don’t worry, I won’t ask.”

George hadn’t recalled Parvati being as cute as she was—but now she was nineteen, she was both sophisticated and beautiful, dressed in a silver, sari-like frock, with her hair swinging around her shoulders and her fringe just falling into her eyes, which were large and dark. A smile remained on her face as the three of them caught up, and George felt certain that she noticed his eyes on her. It was an odd feeling, looking at a woman and thinking of her as such. Odd and certainly not unwelcome, after a year and more of barely noticing the fairer sex _as_ the fairer sex. And as the fairer sex went, Parvati was definitely amongst the fairest.

“Oy,” Ron said suddenly, elbowing George, “ _that’s_ got to be Alfie Flumineus.” He indicated with a nod a man on the other side of the room who looked as though he hadn’t quite accustomed himself to living above the surface of the water, with pale skin and watery eyes and, unless George was mistaken, slight webbing still between several of his fingers.

“That’s him,” Parvati confirmed.

“I’ve got to talk with this bloke,” Ron said. “Looks like he’s still eating gillyweed, doesn’t he? Excuse me, Parvati; it was really good seeing you—”

As Ron made his way across the room, Parvati remarked, “Judging by the amount of personality he’s got, the merfolk _made_ Alfie Flumineus leave because they got too bored with him.” 

George guffawed at that. “ _Daily Prophet_ , then, right?”

“Arts section, though at the minute it’s more gossip.” Parvati tilted her head, making her earrings jangle. “I’m hoping to be given a promotion sometime soon. Not that I don’t enjoy reporting on who’s who in the Wizarding world, but it would be nice to report on actual _news_.”

“Well, speaking for myself,” George said, “I’m glad the _Prophet_ sent its most attractive correspondent.”

Parvati laughed. “Do you even ask if a girl’s single before you start flirting with her?”

“Never. Should I?” Then, because he wasn’t sure if that had been a veiled request to stop—Merlin, he was out of practice with this sort of thing—he remarked with a nod towards her quill, “I see you do your own writing.”

The oblique reference to Rita Skeeter wasn’t lost on her—anyway the old bat had got her job at the _Prophet_ back, God knew how, so they’d probably crossed paths. “Ah, right.” Parvati glanced at the quill and wrote on her notepad, _George Weasley is quite the charmer_ , saying, “I _know_ a Quick-Quotes Quill could have improved upon that.”

Well, that was encouraging. George grinned. “Something like, ‘George Weasley, the most brilliant and handsome man in magical London, still can’t compete with Parvati Patil in terms of sheer looks.”

“Exactly my point. I tell the truth.”

“So do I.”

She took this in stride, not even pretending to blush while she smiled appreciatively at him, and George got the sense that Parvati was a woman who was used to being chatted up. “Well, it was really good seeing you,” she said, “but I’m really here for business, not pleasure; and there’s gossip to be listened in on. Don’t worry, I won’t involve you in it.”

“I figured you wouldn’t.”

With another pretty smile, Parvati turned away from him. “In case you’re wondering,” she said over her shoulder, “I am.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You are?”

Shooting him a slightly mischievous smile, she said, “Single.”

So that she wouldn’t see the equal parts triumphant and stupid smile on his face, he turned and didn’t watch her walk away. That had been...unexpected. Merlin, he’d not had a conversation like that since the Veela cousins at Bill and Fleur’s wedding. It felt good to act just a bit like a normal twenty-one-year-old man. Who knew, maybe he’d even owl her.

As he was musing over these ideas, he stared absently at the back of someone’s head; a tall woman with black hair, whom, with a laugh, turned around at that moment—

“Angelina?” he blurted when he saw who he’d been looking at. He’d never seen her at one of these sorts of things before, though he was sure she got invited just as much as he did—young, eligible Quidditch player like her—she just didn’t attend. At least, he hadn’t thought she did. The refutation to that presumption was currently staring at him in shock.

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise as she exclaimed, “George!” The memory of their last conversation kept him silent for a second, long enough for his eyes to sweep over her and the slight bloke with her. “Er, George, this is Aidan Lynch...” Angelina said unnecessarily. As if George wouldn’t recognise Aidan Lynch, though what Angelina was doing with her arm looped through his; _that_ was rather more of a mystery.

“You’re George Weasley!” Lynch said, sounding thrilled, as though he’d just met a celebrity.

“Last I checked, yeah,” George replied. The two men shook hands and George said, “S’pose I should tell you I’m a big fan—”

Lynch shrugged. He was shorter than Angelina—Seeker build—but his hair was ginger, and George couldn’t help wondering if that was accidental. “I was about to say the same thing to you. Gave the entire team U-No-Poo once; it was brilliant; feckin’ genius.”

George supposed he should be flattered that the Seeker for the Irish national team was so enthusiastic about Wheezes products, but all he could think about was the way his hand was indecently low on Angelina’s back. “I enthusiastically endorse future use of it, particularly if you’re about to play England,” he said, tearing his eyes away from said appendage. Hopefully Angelina hadn’t noticed the direction of his gaze.

That got a laugh from Lynch, though to George’s consternation it clearly also caused his hand to move even lower on Angelina’s back. “Well look, if you ever want to come to a match, get in touch with my manager; he can get you tickets.”

George wondered if some sort of reciprocation was required here—though Fred might exact retribution from beyond the grave if he ever gave anything to a bloke who was all over Angelina like Lynch was. Luckily, Angelina herself saved him from saying anything besides a terse ‘thanks’ by interjecting, “I’m sure you’re busy, George; we won’t keep you...”

He wasn’t, but he let her drag Lynch away, ruminating darkly. It was something he’d been vaguely aware of—Angelina certainly hadn’t been monastic since the Battle, and once or twice she’d brought her current boyfriend round to gatherings that Alicia had foisted upon both of them, always while neglecting to mention that the other had been invited. The thing was, Angelina didn’t even seem to _like_ her blokes, really. Even George could tell that, in the way that her shoulders always seemed slightly stiffened around them, in the way that she seemed to lean away from them. Even now, watching her with Aidan Lynch, George wondered why she bothered. It reminded him of the months during their fourth year, when Angelina’d gone out with a boy a year above them just to spite Fred into noticing that she fancied him. So was she trying to spite him for getting heroically killed?

As the night progressed, George found himself drinking glass after glass of wine, whilst apparently not eating anything because he didn’t _remember_ eating anything, and he supposed that could’ve just been the wine going to his head but he didn’t think he was that far gone. Ron was happy catching up with old schoolmates and forging so many of the connections that George had already forged. George talked for awhile with a funny bloke who introduced himself as Rolf Scamander, apparently some friend of Alfie Flumineus’s, who seemed as though he wanted to be at the release party about as much as George did at that point, before he wandered over to a door on the far side of the room which proved to lead to the roof of the building.

Muggle London lay spread out before him, the Thames visible as a dark swathe to the southeast, pocked by pierces of light as a barge or pleasure boat passed by. He could make out the London Eye and just to its left, the pylons of Hungerford Bridge. The skyscrapers of the City were visible, and St Paul’s as well, lit like an oil painting. Curiously, he turned to face Diagon Alley, wondering if he’d be able to see it. But no, it was too well hidden even for a wizard.

“Oh,” a voice said, making him turn to face it. Angelina was standing in the doorway that led up from the loft below, looking startled. “I didn’t know––”

“Join me, Johnson,” George said grandly. 

Her eyes narrowed but she took a few steps forward, eventually coming to stand more or less next to him. Wrinkling her nose, she remarked, “You’ve been drinking.”

“That obvious?” Why had he drunk so much again? Odd, now he couldn’t remember. Something to do with Fred, or maybe with Angelina herself.

Angelina folded her arms across her chest, almost hugging herself as she clenched her hands into fists under her arms. No Lynch, George realised belatedly. He wondered what she’d done with him; why she’d come up here by herself. He asked her the latter question, and she replied, “Just wanted a bit of fresh air.”

_That_ he could understand. Now she said it, he’d a vague recollection of it being warm and loud in the loft. Instead of agreeing with her, what came out of his mouth was,“So you and Lynch are…” He waved a hand vaguely, waiting for her to fill in the blank, but instead she just raised her eyebrows and he was forced to finish, “Together?”

“Yes,” she answered. There was an odd, barely detectable note of defiance in her voice.

“Hm.”

Her hands clenched more tightly. A detached part of George’s mind wondered how that was even possible—she already looked as though she was going to draw blood on her palms with her fingernails. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

George shrugged. “I just think it’s a little funny; I mean I’ve seen you with a couple different blokes—more than a couple really—”

“Oh, sod off, George, it’s not hurting anybody if I get a little happiness this way,” she snapped.

Something about it—about the casual way that she was trying to replace his brother—made something ugly in him raise its head. “So what,” he started, not caring about how belligerent he sounded, “you’re just tarting around because you miss him—” 

The jinx hit him so fast that he didn’t have time to draw his wand, let alone use a Shield Charm, and George supposed, through his drunken haze, that he should have remembered how fast Angelina’s spellwork could be when angry, which she was at the minute. Extremely angry. And unusually—because it had been Fred that had infuriated her—that anger was directed entirely his way.

He was knocked off his feet and pain shot through his whole body, though it flared out rapidly. The look on Angelina’s face, however, did not. “ _How dare you, George_?” she bellowed. “How _dare_ you judge me when you’ve got—” There she stopped, looking momentarily confused, and George wondered if she’d been about to say _when you’ve got no idea what I’ve gone through_. It must have been second nature, really, a stock phrase made that way because of the truth in it; an easy phrase to pull out for most people, but here it didn’t apply and that appeared to shake her. He wasn’t so far gone in drink that he couldn’t find his feet again, but he didn’t. Instead he sat there stupidly, looking up at Angelina Johnson, who had loved and been loved by his twin, and she was so furious and sad and lonely that he didn’t have the courage to stand back up and face her. After a long few moments, her wand still clutched tightly in her fist like she meant to use it again, she said, “Fuck this,” and dropped her arm to her side.

George knew he deserved the epithet, though he couldn’t deny that the situation did just as much. Before he could say anything, before he could swallow the sudden nausea and find the balls to apologise to her, she whirled, her shoulders clenched tight, and stalked back inside. Maybe she’d have Lynch kick his arse. The only consolation there was that he doubted Lynch could. Not for nothing had George been a Beater at Hogwarts.

Instead of getting to his feet, he fell onto his back, knowing that the impact with the concrete roof would have hurt more if he wasn’t drunk. It was a cloudy night and the low scud was illuminated by the lights of London. The swirling cacophony of the low clouds made him feel slightly sick. He certainly couldn’t hold his drink the way he had done a year ago. Probably that was a good thing, though at the minute, with his gorge halfway up his throat, it felt very bad.

He had just alienated one of his best mates, a girl who’d put up with him through all the rubbish he’d ever pulled on her, who’d forgiven him—not without occasionally hexing him first—for all but ruining her year as Quidditch captain at Hogwarts, for putting Stinksap in her shampoo, for charming her braids to serpentine around her head like snakes, for a hundred indignities that she’d suffered at his hands; a girl who laughed at his jokes unabashedly loudly, who looked the other way on his and Fred’s trouble-making most of the time and occasionally even joined in; a girl who was unashamedly loyal and brave; a girl who’d been able to tell him and Fred apart and had chosen one of them but had never, never made him out to be an imitation of the boy she preferred. And he had bollocksed it all up because he was pissed and stupid, the pathetic thing being that it was probably more to do with being stupid than being pissed.

If the wine hadn’t made him feel miserable enough, this would do the job.

What he really needed to do was find her and apologise, throw himself on her mercy which, despite all her efforts to the contrary, was boundless (at least after she’d had time to cool down). Except at the minute he didn’t feel deserving of her mercy. He didn’t feel like much, in fact, except being sick.

“George? What are you doing?” Ron’s voice cut across his reflections. Unless his ears deceived him, concern laced Ron’s tone. Maybe Angelina had directed him up here. Or maybe Ron had combed the building looking for him, though that seemed unlikely. Or maybe it didn’t. He knew Ron felt responsible for him—which had always rankled him; he certainly didn’t need looking after as though he was a depressed thought away from ending it all; but it wasn’t Ron, it was Mum putting him up to it, so it was really her that rankled him, not wee ickle Ronniekins. Anyway it was a little touching. Just a little. Hovering on the puke-worthy side of touching, really.

“Lying here,” George answered. “What’s it look like?”

“Like you’re lying there,” Ron admitted. “Seems like a bit of a daft thing to do.”

George considered that for a moment. “Wine and I don’t mix well.” Wine, Angelina plus bloke, and him didn’t mix well.

Ron traversed the roof until he was looming over George. “You can stand up, right? I don’t fancy carrying you through Muggle London.”

“Thanks Ron, that brotherly care is heart-warming.” Nevertheless, he pushed himself into a sitting position, reeled from the motion, and put a hand on the ground to steady himself. “I suppose Apparating home’s out.”

“After the time you spewed on me, yeah.” Ron knelt next to George and narrowed his eyes. “Seriously, are you all right? Thought you’d passed out when I got up here.”

Instead of answering, George rubbed a hand across his face. “How’d you know I was up here?”

“I didn’t. I was just looking for you.” He scrutinised George for another second. “Priscilla Zonko’s down there—wants to talk about franchising a location.”

George groaned. “What did you tell her?”

“Well, considering I couldn’t find you, I figured you might be indisposed when I finally did. I said we’d get back to her.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Ron stood up and offered George a hand. “Think I’ll be off in a few. Want to stop by Hermione’s with me? I think she’s making dinner.”

“No, but thanks,” George said, taking his brother’s hand. It was instinctual to turn down invitations of this sort, though this time, he regretted it a little, and not just because Hermione’s culinary skills had improved markedly since she’d first started cooking for herself. “You’re a lucky bastard, Ron, you realise that? Your girlfriend is making you _dinner_ when you’ve been out sipping fine wine with socialites.”

With a grin, Ron said, “You don’t need to tell me.” Then, he said again, “You should come by.”

“Merlin’s beard, Ron, I’m fine—”

“It’s nothing to do with you being fine or not,” Ron cut him off, a fiercer look in his eyes than George was used to seeing. “I just think it’d be nice if you’d come by, all right?”

He opened his mouth to refuse again, but then he shut it without saying anything. It was probably because he’d been lying on the ground looking comatose that Ron was inviting him. Then again, what did he have planned for the evening? Go back to his flat, sit there alone and think about what a tosser he’d been to Angelina? “Yeah, all right,” he said impulsively. “If you think Hermione won’t mind.”

“Hermione said I was to Stupify you if you wouldn’t come along of your own free will,” Ron replied cheerfully.

George put a hand to the earless side of his head. “I’m halfway there, anyway.” He wouldn’t’ve minded being Stupified at the minute, actually. Between too much wine and what had happened between him and Angelina, some peace and quiet would’ve been nice. But then, a little defiantly, he remembered Parvati.

The next morning he sent the lovely Miss Patil an owl.

 

* * *

 

They did not franchise to Priscilla Zonko. Ron was for it, but George barely listened during their meeting with her and said no politely but firmly.

“I think you’re mad,” Ron informed him as they walked back to the shop.

“Look, if it’d been somewhere besides the Hogsmeade location…” George began, but he didn’t want to finish the sentence. He didn’t think he could explain, anyway. It was because he and Fred had been so close to opening up a branch in Hogsmeade. Not a franchise, not Zonko’s running another shop with the Weasley name on it, but a proper branch. It didn’t feel right, letting someone else take their first expansion right out from under them. And any sensible person would have pointed out that no one would’ve been taking anything, but George didn’t care. Not the Hogsmeade location. He’d open it up himself or it wouldn’t open. Or Priscilla Zonko could open up her own damn joke shop there. She wouldn’t; didn’t have the temperament. It was her father’d had the mind for it, but he, like so many others, had disappeared in that terrible year. “We’d make more money opening up the branch there ourselves,” George finally finished.

Ron looked at him seriously. “Then we should do it.”

George focussed his gaze ahead, on the always colourful and kinetic display window of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. Of course they should do it. He and Fred had been probably weeks from it, back in ’97, but what with things the way they’d been…certainly there weren’t many students let out in Hogsmeade once the Death Eaters had taken over at Hogwarts. They’d sworn it would be one of the first things they’d do once the War was over. Almost two years later, and George still hadn’t got round to it. The money was there, the demand was certainly there. It was something in _him_ that wasn’t there. “We will,” he said, reluctantly binding himself to the idea. “Just not right now.”

Thankfully, Ron left it at that. He was more perceptive than he let on, Ronniekins was. Or maybe he was more perceptive than Fred and George, together, had ever given him credit for. George thought that, alone, he gave him rather more. As they walked into the shop together, Ron asked, “Want to have dinner with Hermione and me tonight?”

George plucked a Pygmy Puff out of the hands of a young girl who hadn’t yet been taught not to squeeze small cuddly animals and put it on his shoulder. “Thanks for the offer, bro, but I’ve got plans, actually.”

“Oh, Lee coming round?”

“No.” They reached the till, where Verity was just finishing packing up a customer’s purchase. “Thanks, Ver. Had lunch yet?”

“Not yet,” she said, sounding cheerful nonetheless. “How was your meeting with Ms Zonko?”

He stepped around to the other side of the counter. “Tell you later. Have something to eat, first.”

As she left, Ron looked at George and picked up where he’d left off—“Alicia and Sloper?” he guessed.

“Er, no,” George replied. “Incidentally, Jack Sloper’s got a lifetime ban from this shop. The man’s an insufferable git; I don’t care if him and Alicia marry and have ten children.”

“Right, I’ll remember that. Who are you seeing, then?”

George gave the Pygmy Puff an absentminded pet. “I’m having a drink with Parvati Patil, if you must know.”

Looking at George sharply, Ron asked, “Really?” When George nodded, Ron added, “Well, that’s—well done, mate!”

George didn’t really think the look of absolute shock on Ron’s face was warranted. “You seem unduly surprised.” That was putting it lightly. Ron’s eyebrows were raised practically to his hairline and his mouth was hanging open slightly.

“No,” Ron said quickly, trying to rearrange his features into a more casual expression, “no, I’m not.It’s just—well, you haven’t, you know…”

“Figured it was time to stop disappointing the witches of Britain,” George said, saving Ron from having to voice the embarrassing fact of George’s nonexistent romantic life. “And abroad, for that matter.”

Several more customers queued up to the till at the moment, so the conversation was halted until they’d rung them up, and then Ron asked, “Where are you meeting her? The Leaky Cauldron?”

Shaking his head, George replied, “No, some place in Covent Garden. Near her flat, I guess. She says it’s wizard run but Muggle friendly, whatever that means.”

Ron shrugged. “S’pose you’ll find out.”

“Suppose I will,” George agreed.

When he set out to meet her—walking seemed easiest; he hadn’t been to Covent Garden recently and couldn’t remember where he was supposed to Apparate to—he felt slightly odd. Not nervous or anxious; there was no need for _that_ just because he was meeting a woman, but something just…off. He wondered if he was doing this because he really wanted to or because he was trying to prove something to someone. Problem was, he didn’t know to whom he wanted to prove…whatever it was he was trying to prove. _If_ he was trying to prove something. Parvati had been nice to talk to and look at for fifteen minutes at a party, but he wasn’t at all sure that he could hold up his end of a romantic outing for much longer than that. Mostly, he just didn’t know if he was ready for this, which felt like the most daft thing in the world to think. But he supposed grief could do that to a person. It had him, apparently.

Before too long, he found himself approaching a small, upscale pub on a narrow street. Parvati was already standing outside, and when she spotted him, she smiled. “Hi,” she said a little breathlessly when he reached her side. “You found it.”

“Hi,” he replied. “And yeah, you’d think I’d be hopeless with directions, wouldn’t you, lopsided as I am.” Parvati looked unsure of herself at this, and George quickly changed the subject, making a mental note of the fact that the ear _missing_ wasn’t a problem, exactly, but jokes about it might be. “I’ve been in the area before, though I’ve never seen this place.”

The uncertainty fled from Parvati’s face and she said, “Well, I hope you’ll like it. Should we go in?” 

They each ordered a pint at the bar—George noticed an extensive list of Muggle brews, and next to it, another list that he suspected Muggle patrons might find their eyes sliding over without really seeing. Then they found a table along one wall. As they settled themselves there, Parvati commented, “Padma—my sister, I don’t know if you remember—thought it was hilarious that I was going out with you. She says no matter what, the first thing she thinks of when she hears the name Weasley is the Yule Ball. She went with Ron, remember?”

George guffawed. “That’s right. And he spent all night mooning about Hermione and Krum. Tried to get him out on the dance floor myself, but he wasn’t having any of it.”

“Are Ron and Hermione together now?”

“Very much so.”

“I thought so. And Ginny—well, obviously her and Harry, that’s a bit more difficult to keep quiet.” Parvati took a sip of her beer. “I did a piece on Ginny right after I’d started at the _Prophet_ and right after she started with the Harpies. We talked a lot about what she did at Hogwarts that year.” There was no need to specify what ‘that year’ referred to. “The _Prophet_ didn’t want any of it; they cared more about what trainers she wore during matches, but…I thought people would’ve liked to know.” She paused for a second, and then added, “Say hello to her for me.”

“Will do,” George said, and then, “Haven’t got that promotion yet, have you?”

She made a face. “Not since last week, no.”

“I’ll have to start paying better attention to who’s writing what in the _Prophet_ ; I’ve never even noticed your name.”

“Somehow I never imagined you reading it at all.”

George grinned. “Well, I don’t, really, but I can always start.”

“I’d be flattered,” Parvati laughed.

She was fun and different from the women he spent most of his time around. And she did not, aside from the one oblique reference to her last year at Hogwarts, want to talk about any of the bad parts of the past. After about two hours, George said he didn’t want to keep her out too late, but then asked, “Can I walk you home?” as he helped her with her jacket.

“What a gentleman,” she said, swiveling so that she could see him. “I’d like that.”

It had rained while they were inside but had stopped, and the pub was only a short walk back to her flat—a few streets over, past a dark, leafy park to her building, a brick complex that faced out on one end towards the park. Whilst walking they talked easily about the very good beer the pub served, about the Muggle at the table next to them who’d seemed to know more about the establishment than she was letting on, about the vagaries of living in London, and anything else that came to mind. Parvati was easy to talk to and didn’t expect anything from him except that he act as though he was entirely whole and unchanged from the man—well, the boy—that she’d known at Hogwarts. And he didn’t mind acting the part.

Once they’d reached her building, they stopped outside the door and faced each other. “Well,” he said.

“Well,” she echoed.

Figuring he might as well take the chance, he leaned down and kissed her softly. She returned it, and the two of them stood there, a normal couple kissing each other good-night, for several seconds. Merlin, how long had it been since he’d kissed a woman? Well over two years. Too long, considering he’d quite enjoyed it, and had, by all accounts, been rather good at it. He put one hand lightly to the small of her back and he knew, in that instant, that seeing Parvati had been the right thing to do, and that he very much wanted to keep seeing her.

When they broke apart, Parvati took his hand lightly. “I’d like to do this again.”

“Yeah?” George asked, and she nodded, smiling. “How about next week? We can progress to dinner?”

“That sounds perfect,” she replied, standing on her toes to kiss him again briefly. Then, with that smile that he was beginning to think of as enigmatic, she turned away from him. He watched her let herself into the building before turning and walking away himself, his hands in his pockets, his trainers scuffing on the wet asphalt.

Covent Garden had a sizable magical population, mainly due to its proximity to Diagon Alley. He and Fred had briefly considered letting a flat there to get away from the shop when they weren’t working, until both of them had decided that they didn’t particularly _want_ to get away from the shop. George had been on this particular street before, though, he realised suddenly. Unless his memory was faulty, Angelina Johnson lived in one of these buildings. In fact, he remembered exactly which one, from the one time he’d been there. It had been a party she’d thrown just after she’d signed with Ballycastle—just after she’d let the flat, really, and he remembered how bare the place had been, and yet how she’d filled it with her exuberance and vibrancy.

He stopped on the footpath for a moment in front of her building without thinking about it, and his eyes found the lit window that he knew to be hers. For a moment, he considered letting himself into the building and knocking on her door. The longer he stared at the little square of her window, though, the more he knew he’d never do it. Funny, he’d never considered himself a coward—rather the opposite, actually; he’d never questioned getting Sorted into Gryffindor—but the idea of facing her after what had happened at the book release party caused a decidedly heavy pit to form in his stomach. He didn’t know what it was, exactly. Women had been angry at him before. Of course, he’d never said something quite so bad to those women as he had Angelina. He cursed himself again for saying it—for even _thinking_ it—but he couldn’t bring himself to do the one thing in his power to make it better: apologise.

Because she might not accept an apology. That was what it was, wasn’t it? As long as he hadn’t made the overture, he didn’t know how things stood between them. Of course he _did_ ; where things stood was that he’d been a twat who needed to beg her forgiveness, but if he actually made the effort and was rejected, then he’d know once and for all that whatever relationship he had with Angelina was over. For some reason that he suspected went beyond that they’d merely been childhood friends, this was a uniquely terrible prospect.

With a twist in his gut, he tore himself away from the sight of her window and continued his walk home. He’d planned on Apparating but it seemed, suddenly, better to expend some energy on walking. It might—though he very much doubted it—drive Angelina Johnson, and his guilt, out of his mind. 


	3. Chapter 3

There was a second, third, and fourth time with Parvati, the last of which had ended with them in the flat that she shared with her sister, who conveniently was traveling for business. He liked her. She was beautiful, she was fun; she laughed at his jokes. She didn’t ask about Fred. And she didn’t _avoid_ the subject the way some people did, rather she just…didn’t bring him up. Still, the first time he saw Padma—her own scar evident from the Battle in her shriveled left hand that stayed clenched at her side—there was a twinge of warning in his heart. Maybe Parvati didn’t care to talk about Fred because she simply couldn’t understand, because her twin sister was very much alive. Or maybe she didn’t want to understand what it was like, because Padma had come close enough to being taken from her. He shook the feeling off, though, suspecting it might have more to do with him than with her. Parvati hadn’t known Fred. They’d been two years older than her, after all. There was nothing to talk about, nothing to reminisce about. Not like the way it was with Lee, Alicia, Katie, and Oliver. And certainly not the way it was with Angelina. She was a class unto herself on the issue. Well, maybe not entirely unto herself. He supposed, really, that he shared it with her.

One warm Sunday in March, with the shop closed for one much needed day of rest per week, he glanced up from his table in the laboratory and saw a shaft of yellow sunlight shining straight down the corridor and pooling on the floor outside. For a moment he stared at it blankly, his mind still stuck on asphodel measurements, but then his gaze focussed on it and he noted the particular bright quality of the light. When he’d been at Hogwarts, light of that sort shining through the windows of the common room had demanded removing oneself outdoors. George saw no reason to break that fine tradition just because he was almost four years out of school, though outdoors would have to consist of a trip round Diagon Alley and probably a visit to old Florean Fortescue’s, now run by his son. Just before he walked out the shop door, he considered asking Parvati if she wanted to join him. For a second, he thought about it, one hand poised above the doorknob, but then he decided she’d probably rather catch up with her sister, who was supposed to have returned from France the previous night.

The sunlight warming his shoulders was a welcome change from the gloomy, overcast, and rainy days of the past several weeks. Spring was putting in an early appearance, and the denizens of Diagon Alley were taking full advantage of it, not to mention witches and wizards who just fancied a Sunday shopping. George made his way towards Florean Fortescue’s, which was plenty busy, and when he finally reached the counter, he ordered a chocolate ice cream cone with the parlour’s special exploding hundreds and thousands.

As he waited for his ice cream, he glanced out the shop front idly, and his eyes lit upon a familiar, slender form outside, her dark, curly hair cascading onto her shoulders; intent on the window display at Quality Quidditch Supplies across the street. “Oy,” he said to the pimply wizard behind the counter, “could you make that two of those?” 

He made the decision without thinking, without giving himself the chance to consider whether or not this was the moment that he finally manned up and apologised to her. She was outside the ice cream parlour at the very moment that he was inside—if that wasn’t a sign, what was? More importantly, he’d no idea if she even liked chocolate. Or ice cream, for that matter. But a person was mad not to like Florean Fortescue’s. Now, she might reject it on the grounds that it was coming from him, which he couldn’t blame her for, but the ice cream itself seemed like the surest bet for a reconciliatory gesture.

Not wanting to wait for the change, he left a Galleon on the counter and then, taking both ice cream cones carefully, said, “Keep the difference as your tip,” before pushing the door open with an elbow and walking outside. Angelina, luckily, was still studying the Quidditch gear on display across the street.

He didn’t allow himself to stop walking and only drew a breath before he stopped at her side and asked, “Wizarding world’s a small place, isn’t it?” Without any explanation, he held the second ice cream cone out to her.

“George!” she exclaimed, apparently before she could think to do otherwise, and then, finding herself holding the ice cream cone after unthinkingly taking it, “What’s this?”

“It’s an apology. For being a git.”

“Chocolate ice cream?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

George sighed. “No, look, it’s not _just_ chocolate ice cream, I’ve got it with these exploding hundreds and thousands for you.”

As Angelina looked at it, several of the brightly coloured hundreds and thousands burst, sending up showers of flavoured sparkles. George watched her, trying not to feel anxious. Funny how that got really difficult every time he remembered, uncomfortably, that the last time he’d seen her he’d all but called her a tart. Trying not to look as anxious as he felt, then. He could see a multitude of emotions rippling across her face, though they all went by too fast for him to decipher. What he _could_ do, though, was see that she hadn’t slapped him, punched him, hexed or jinxed him, or dropped the ice cream, either on the ground or him. This, he could not help thinking, was very encouraging.

“I was way out of line, Angelina,” he said in a quieter, more serious tone. “In fact ‘git’ doesn’t really cover it.” He paused to see if he could judge if his words were having any positive effect, but her expression was totally unreadable. “I didn’t mean it. The minute I said it I wanted to jinx _myself_ for being an idiot.” He paused again and wondered if he should add that he’d been pissed, besides, but decided at the last second that it sounded too much like an excuse. “It’s killing me thinking I said that rubbish to you.”

For a long moment, she was silent, and George almost held his breath. Then, she met his eyes. “Oh, stop it, George, I know you’re just being dramatic,” Angelina said, but there was a hint of a weary smile on her face.

He seized upon that and shot her a smile of his own. “Yeah, all right. Maybe a bit. But seriously, it’s pretty upsetting imagining you angry at me.”

For a long moment, she looked disbelieving, but then the ice scream started dribbling as it melted in the pleasantly warm March sun, and she had to quickly slurp at it to keep it from running down her fingers. As she did so, their eyes met again, and she looked so ridiculous—and obviously knew it—that he couldn’t help guffawing.

There was a split second then that he thought he might have miscalculated, but then a grin cracked her face. “You know, you’ve got chocolate ice cream all down the back of your hand,” she pointed out, causing George to swear good-naturedly and attend to it. For several minutes, their first priority was dealing with their rapidly melting ice cream cones, with Angelina snorting at one point that between his freckles and the smears of chocolate ice cream, he looked as though he was suffering a particularly severe case of spattergoit. They walked as they ate, and before long they found themselves approaching Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.

For a moment, George hesitated, but then he asked, “Want to come in for a minute? Up to the flat, not the shop. No invitation needed for the shop, obviously.” Of course, there’d been a time when the flat was open to her as well.

She cocked her head and tilted it back, looking up at the windows of the flat that faced onto Diagon Alley. Her expression was reflective, not the barely-contained sadness he’d seen there every other time they’d had a conversation in the last three months, but an honest musing about what it would mean to accept his invitation.

“Yeah,” she finally said, turning her head to look at him. “I’d like that.”

It made him happy, in an uncomplicated sort of way, to show her in, through the empty and darkened shop and up the stairs at the back to his flat. He didn’t ask about Aidan Lynch. Implicit in her forgiveness of his wankery was the fact that he mind his own bloody business.

“Your housekeeping hasn’t improved,” was the first thing that Angelina said when he opened the door.

“Sorry,” he said hastily, waving his wand in the vain hope that some of the mess would clear. A couple of plates rattled and his spare shop robes flopped feebly, but other than that, it had no effect. “Ignore that.”

“No magic is that powerful,” she said, sounding amused. Then, for a moment, she stood in the open doorway, poised to enter but not quite going through with it. George wondered if she thought she’d made a mistake coming with him, but then he saw her draw a quick, fortifying breath, and she stepped inside. “Somehow I expected everything to look the same,” she said wryly.

The comment made George glance around. “Doesn’t it?”

Angelina stared at the couch for a moment. In profile, her face looked troubled, a flicker of foreboding passing over it before she looked back to him. “No.” Then she sighed and George saw her breath hitch in her throat as she let her eyes wander round the room again. When they made their way back to meet his, she said, sounding as though it took some hidden well of strength to do so, “It’s obvious you live here by yourself.”

George held her gaze before he had to break it. He half got the feeling that she was expecting something from him beyond a simple affirmation of this still-terrible fact. “Well, I do. Unfortunately.”

With a nod, the tension across her face eased. “You do,” she agreed. Maybe she’d been expecting that he’d kept it all the same; like some sort of mad shrine, and she’d come face to face with her old life. 

“I haven’t even got most of his things anymore,” George informed her, hoping it wouldn’t make the tension come back. Of course, there hadn’t been many things that had been Fred’s alone, but where possible, he’d given things away to friends or donated them to charities. He could remember asking Alicia, just over a year previously, if she thought Angelina might want something of Fred’s. Alicia had paused, her mouth open in preparation to answer, and then she’d closed it thoughtfully. “Just a picture, maybe?” she had replied. There weren’t many of Fred and Angelina alone but George had parted with all of them, pretending not to notice as Alicia had blinked back tears.

Then, Angelina gave him a strained smile. “I’m sorry, George, I didn’t want to come up here and just talk about Fred.”

“I don’t mind,” he said honestly. She was never condescending or pitying the way so many people tended to be. “Gets a bit depressing after awhile, though,” he added.

Her smile became much less strained and she said, “Then let’s not.” She looked around, and then, without an invitation, plopped down on the couch. “Tell me how things are. Tell me about the shop and about your family. Everything.”

George laughed and sat next to her. “Tall order. Let’s see, I suppose the major Weasley news is my sister-in-law being pregnant.”

“Is this your only sister-in-law or one that I’ve not met?” she asked.

“No, it’s Fleur.” He leaned back into the old couch which had always smelled faintly of gunpowder. “Bill’s convinced it’s a boy but Fleur insists it’s a girl.”

She raised a querying eyebrow. “And what do you think?”

With a grin, he replied, “All I know is that if, boy or girl, it takes after Fleur, then it’ll be the most spoilt wizard or witch in Britain. Mum and Dad’s first grandkid and one-eighth Veela—the wizarding world won’t stand a chance.”

“No, I don’t suppose it will,” Angelina agreed, smiling. “What else? I’m serious; tell me everything, I––” She broke off, then finished, “I’ve missed just speaking with you like this.”

“I get that a lot,” George replied, prompting a snort from her. But he knew what she meant—once they really started talking, there was plenty to talk about. Once their respective careers gave way to other topics, they covered, amongst other things, the likelihood that at least one British or Irish team would make it to the finals of the next Quidditch World Cup in two years (“England lost two players during the War,” George remarked, “I just dunno if we can recover from that.”

“But Wales only lost a few reserves,” Angelina reminded him.

“India’ll win the Cup, anyway; they’re bloody killing everybody they play,” George sighed), Minister Shacklebolt’s effectiveness as Minister of Magic, the severe reduction in flavours at Florean Fortescue’s, the shameful lack of a decent curry house in Diagon Alley since Namboothiri’s had closed, how truly horrid Dolores Umbridge had been (always good for a few minutes of abuse, even all these years later), and what their large circle of friends and acquaintances had been doing for the past two years. George hadn’t known, for example, that Lavender Brown was training to be a Healer, and Angelina hadn’t known that Neville Longbottom planned on applying for the position of Herbology professor at Hogwarts once Professor Sprout retired in a few years. In the middle of it, he finally remembered some of his stunted manners and offered her a cup of tea.

Finally, Angelina glanced out the west-facing window. The sun was shining through it and she glanced back towards George, saying, “I’ve taken up most of your day.”

“Yeah, but it was the nice sort of taking up my day,” he replied with a crooked smile.

“Hm, I’m sensing some sarcasm,” Angelina remarked, and he didn’t bother to correct her.

As they got up, they went back to debating Quidditch (“I won’t make you choose between the Bats and the Harpies for who wins the League,” Angelina remarked, and George had replied, “Oh, you can make me choose; it’ll obviously be the Bats. Unless Ginny asks, then it’s the Harpies”). He walked down to the door of the shop with her, deciding aloud that he needed to start going to more Quidditch matches and Angelina agreeing whole-heartedly. When they reached the door, Angelina said, “Thanks for the tea.”

“You’re most welcome, dear Miss Johnson.” He noted, happily, that she didn’t flinch away from this—admittedly ridiculous—endearment, but rather smiled. “Any time you fancy a cuppa, you know where to come.”

She laughed. “Thanks. A decent cup of tea is such a difficult thing to come by, after all.”

“Well,” he replied, “what can I say, it’s that special Weasley boy touch…and likely several years worth of accumulated filth.”

In response to that, she just raised an eyebrow. Merlin, had he ever missed her. It occurred to him, without thinking about it, that Parvati would have been put off by a joke like that. “How droll,” Angelina remarked, a flicker of laughter in her eyes. She put a hand on the doorknob, but then she hesitated, looking at him thoughtfully.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she replied quickly, but then removed her hand from the doorknob and pressed her lips together. “I was just wondering,” she began, “if that invitation for lunch still stands?”

George grinned at her. This morning, when he’d seen her outside Florean Fortescue’s, he’d been half convinced that she never wanted to speak to him again. He was pretty bloody happy he’d got that second ice cream cone for her. “Obviously,” he replied. “When are you free?”

A smile spread across her face. “Tuesday. One-thirtyish? I’ve only got practice in the morning that day.”

“One-thirty, that’s a bit long to wait for lunch; I’ll obviously have to have a proper breakfast on Tuesday.” The smile didn’t leave his face as she snorted. “Want me to meet you somewhere?”

Putting her hand back to the doorknob and opening it, she said, “No, I’ll come here. I’m not fussed about where we eat, really…I’m sure we can come up with something.” She stood in the open doorway for a moment while they faced each other, and then she smiled just slightly uncertainly. “I’m looking forward to it.”

He put out a hand to hold the door open for her. “Me too.”

For another moment, they stared at each other, and then, with a self-conscious duck of her head, Angelina stepped outside, turned and gave him a small wave—which he returned—and made her way down Diagon Alley to continue whatever she’d been doing before they had so fortuitously encountered each other. George turned away to go back inside before she’d disappeared, but the image of her, walking down Diagon Alley into a blaze of afternoon sun, lingered in his mind long after he’d gone back to work.

 

* * *

 

It was the Leaky Cauldron for them the first week. Simple, uncomplicated, and easy to agree upon; they’d been drawn to it more than decided upon it. The next week—because they agreed, once they’d finished their rather long lunch (Ron had grumbled that he shouldn’t have bothered coming back at all just for a few more hours) that the outing had been a success, and maybe, would it be prudent to repeat it?—they had sandwiches and sat outside at a wobbly wrought-iron table, because the March sun was shining warmly again.

“When’s your sister-in-law due, again?” Angelina asked as she wiped pickle off her face with her napkin.

“Sometime in May,” George replied. “She’s enormous though.”

Angelina rolled her eyes. “Oh, that’s lovely. Please tell me you’ve not informed her of that.”

Putting a hand over his heart, he replied in scandalised tones, “I’d never say such a thing to my most beautiful sister-in-law.”

“Isn’t she your _only_ sister-in-law?”

“Details, details.”

“Well,” Angelina said, ignoring him except for a quick flicker of amusement in her eyes, “I was wondering if I should get her and Bill something for the baby.”

George sat back in his chair, feeling it over-balance for a moment. Leaning forward again to keep from tipping over, he said, “You don’t have to do that.”

One of Angelina’s eyebrows was arched. “I know I don’t have to. I want to know if you think it would be all right. Not too weird.”

Though he wondered which part of it she thought might come across as ‘too weird’, he just said, “No, I think they’d appreciate it.” Then, he added, “Since when have you been so thoughtful?”

“I’ve always been thoughtful!” she replied in an outraged voice.

Though he didn’t say it—confining his response to a smile—he knew that she was. He would always remember their first year at Hogwarts, how when his and Fred’s birthday had come round, they’d got presents from their friends, all labeled ‘to Fred and George’. Angelina, alone of everyone else, had got _each_ of them something: one small, wrapped parcel for each of them, with their names printed alone in her neat hand. At the time he hadn’t cared; it had suited them to be more or less interchangeable, but as they’d got older George had thought back on that moment and wondered why it was that Angelina had always seen their differences. 

And not just those small differences in appearance between them—she’d fancied Fred right away; he’d come to know that about her later, that she was smitten just seeing him at Platform 9 ¾—but other things that he’d never understood how she picked up so quickly, like their voices, their intonations, their handwriting—which was quite different if anyone had cared to notice, not that George had ever imagined anyone would until a day that he and Fred had been chucking their unfinished Transfiguration essays at each other from across the common room and one had bounced off the top of Angelina’s head. She’d picked it up, unrolled it, and lazily returned it—to George. His name hadn’t been on it; _he_ hadn’t even known whose was whose in the fracas, and he’d asked how _she’d_ known. “Your As don’t look anything alike,” she’d replied. He wondered now if A had been the letter she’d gravitated towards because there were two of them in her name; two chances for her to see, every time he wrote out her name, what her first initial looked like in Fred’s handwriting.

This was not to say that their friends couldn’t tell the difference between them. But sometimes—not all the time, but occasionally—there’d be a hesitation, a once-over to check for the markers that distinguished them as individuals. George still caught people doing it occasionally, even though the markers were now painfully obvious. Angelina, though—he’d never seen her do it. Ever.

They decided they’d meet again the following week; same time, same place, and went their separate ways. It was funny, but when he’d first seen her in December, his first impression of her was that she desperately wanted people thinking she was okay when she obviously wasn’t. It didn’t seem that she needed to try as hard anymore.

The day following his second lunch with Angelina was the closest Wednesday to the end of the month—and thus, ordering day. Wednesday because for some reason it was their least busy day, and the end of the month because it was the sort of arbitrary deadline that Ron and Verity both liked. George and Fred had done things more haphazardly—ordered supplies as they’d needed them, but Ron said he couldn’t work that way. George had said Hermione was having a bad influence on him. Verity had then promptly agreed with Ron. “You know, I didn’t have to hire you back,” George had said sourly to Verity.

“Yes, you did,” she’d replied matter-of-factly.

He’d grumbled but couldn’t come up with any rational reason—at least a reason that didn’t involve the words, ‘this is the way Fred and I did things’—so Ron and Verity’s way it was. It seemed a silly thing to have got upset by, but in those days, it had been the little things that’d upset him most.

George bit the end of his quill absent-mindedly, staring down at the order form he was filling out and debating whether or not to shout at Ron to hurry up with taking stock in the back room. Scheherazade’s Exotics Bazaar—known affectionately as One Thousand and One Class A-E Tradeables—had a better price on its five gallon container of Doxy venom than the two gallon, but the more one bought at a time, the more Ministry forms one had to fill out. “Oh, sod it,” he muttered, then quickly looked up to make sure no innocent children had heard him. Luckily, the closest one was two rows away in the trick sweets section. Looking back to the order form, he scratched in a three next to the ‘Doxy Venom—five gal’, splitting his quill in the process.

With a long suffering sigh, he chucked the useless thing back over his shoulder and ducked down below the counter to grab a new quill.

“Hello, George!” a voice said enthusiastically and suddenly—so suddenly that it caused him to jump and slam his head against the bottom of the counter. “Oh,” the voice winced, “sorry, I’ve startled you…”

“S’all right,” George said, his eyes watering a little as he righted himself and confronted a brunette woman with glasses. “‘Lo, Audrey,” he greeted, returning the hug she gave him when he got to his feet and went round the counter. “Is my stick-in-the-mud brother with you?”

“He is,” Percy said as he appeared behind her, closing an umbrella carefully to avoid getting water on the merchandise. The two of them hugged tightly, and when Ron appeared, the greetings were repeated. “Have the two of you got any time for lunch?” Percy asked, straightening his glasses.

George cast an eye around the shop. They were doing a decent business but nothing that Verity couldn’t handle, and he asked her to mind the till while they were out. Both him and Ron grabbed jackets to go out in the rain, and when Percy held his umbrella over Audrey’s head as they walked towards the Leaky Cauldron, Ron remarked that he’d never realised Percy’d had it in him to be so considerate.

“I didn’t,” Percy replied with a good-natured grimace.

“Ah, character growth,” George sighed melodramatically.

Audrey laughed and took Percy’s arm, kissing him on the cheek. “We should all be so self-aware,” she remarked, meeting Percy’s eyes and holding them. George and Ron shared a glance and he could see that they were both wondering why Percy and Audrey had come by in the middle of the week like this. Percy came by the shop often enough, but rarely during the day, because he didn’t like to take more than an hour for lunch. It was all quite mysterious and unlike his older brother. Then again, Perce had become, for him, remarkably more easy-going in the past couple years. Audrey’d had a lot to do with that—she’d rounded out his consuming guilt over the way he’d betrayed his family, only to return to the fold and have Fred die next to him.

George shook himself. Whatever the reason Percy and Audrey were there, it was clearly good. Audrey couldn’t keep a smile off her face and Percy—serious, ministerial Percy, was practically grinning. He didn’t need to spoil the mood by thinking about all the things that had gone wrong.

By the time they got to the Leaky Cauldron, George was seriously wishing he’d brought an umbrella of his own and wondered if he’d impale anybody if he were to Summon it from his current position. Ron had pulled his robes up over his head but George had slightly too much dignity to do the same, so it was with wet hair that he sat down at the table the four of them chose. Percy went to the bar to put their orders in while George and Ron caught up with Audrey, mostly about their respective careers. “We’re on full-time preparations now for the second of May,” Audrey said, sighing and stirring the cup of tea she’d ordered. “People tend to get…carried away with the celebrations.”

“Percy said you pull a couple of all-nighters a year,” Ron said. Indeed, both of them remembered how he’d gone on about the dedication a ‘friend of his in the Obliviation office’ had to her work the previous May. They’d teased him once they’d found out the friend was a woman, but when their older brother had gone beet red they’d cut it out. The next week, Percy had brought Audrey Wells round the Burrow for a Weasley family dinner and everyone had noticed the way they’d held hands under the table.

“I was up forty-eight hours straight last year,” she said cheerfully. George and Ron both winced, but Audrey smiled. “I can handle just the one night a year. Or two, as the case may be. Anyway, it’s nice Obliviating people who’ve mostly seen the best of us instead of the worst. I meet loads of nice people.”

“But they don’t remember you after you’ve met them, do they?” George asked.

“Well, no,” she shrugged, “but I remember them.”

It was difficult to argue with that, and the conversation turned to Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. Audrey asked how the Polypills were selling. The answer was brilliantly—they’d heard, in fact, that Polypills had been banned within a week at Hogwarts. George thought that might have something to do with the fact that they’d settled on doing Filch with his stringy hair in rollers as one of the options. The two of them—him and Ron—had been pretty pleased with what they thought was a record-short time in which a joke product had been legal at Hogwarts.

When Percy sat back down, Audrey looked at him, her eyes alight like she was bursting with news. After a moment, Percy broke eye contact with her and said, “Well, we actually wanted to talk to the two of you today to…er, tell you something.”

“Spit it out then, Perce,” Ron said good-naturedly.

He looked at Audrey again, the barely-held-back grin on his face again. “I asked Audrey to marry me and, well…”

“I said yes!” Audrey interjected as Percy covered her hands with his.

“Perce!” George exclaimed, immediately getting to his feet and bounding to the other side of the table, where he pulled his older brother into a hug. Percy was grinning idiotically, and George told him “Congratulations, Perce,” before he clapped him on the back and moved to embrace Audrey. “Are you sure you know what you’re getting into?” he asked her.

She gave him a bright smile. “I do, and I can’t wait.”

Ron elbowed George out of the way so he could hug Audrey as well, and it took a moment for the four of them to notice Tom, the barman, standing with their lunches on a tray, a bemused expression on his face. They all hastily sat again and took their plates from him. “It’ll be a small wedding,” Percy said without prompting once they’d all started eating. “We thought that would be best.”

“For everyone involved,” Audrey added. 

“D’you know when it’ll be?” Ron asked.

Percy and Audrey glanced at each other. “We were thinking November,” Audrey replied.

“And it’s going to be a Muggle wedding,” Percy said. “At least the ceremony.”

“Perce, we haven’t decided—” Audrey began, but Percy squeezed her hand and reiterated, “It’s going to be a Muggle wedding. That way we can invite friends of Audrey’s—Muggles.”

She smiled adoringly at him but then joked to George and Ron, “I don’t want to have to Obliviate my parents’ friends.”

George thought that the most amazing thing about that remark was how Percy laughed; that and the mere fact that Percy was marrying a woman who _joked_. Character growth indeed. He’d always known he’d liked Audrey—after all, anyone that could make a joke about wiping people’s memories had to be _some_ fun, but that cemented that as a sister-in-law, he was going to get along with her just fine.

“Audrey’s maid-of-honour’s a Muggle,” Percy informed them.

“If she says yes,” Audrey laughed, “which is no guarantee. My best friend,” she explained to George and Ron. “I think she’s always suspected _something’s_ a bit different about me but we’ve never really discussed it. I think she knows everything’s better off that way.”

Percy laughed a bit self-deprecatingly. “Not that I helped matters. Couldn’t think of what to say when she asked where I worked.”

“You said in the Minister’s office, didn’t you?” George asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“And she asked, ‘which minister?’” Percy said. “So I told her the Ministry of Justice.” He paused for effect. “It turns out she’s a solicitor.”

Audrey laughed into her Gillywater while Ron choked on the beer he’d half-swallowed.

Clapping Ron casually on the back as his younger brother coughed and spluttered, George asked, “I don’t suppose you got off easily and found out she’s a solicitor on the Shetlands?”

“Of course not,” Percy said with a grimace. “Her office is in Whitehall.”

“Nice one, Percy,” Ron was able to manage, having finally stopped choking.

Laughing, George added, “Better you than me; at least you could probably fake it. I’d’ve never even come up with Ministry of Justice. So job well done, I say.” He raised his glass and his older brother chuckled and clinked his glass of Gillywater against it.

The conversation naturally turned to the Ministry at that point, and more specifically Percy’s position there. The Order of the Phoenix disbanded now (not that anyone was complaining), George hadn’t seen Kingsley Shacklebolt in ages, and he was always curious to know how the Minister of Magic was getting on from the point of view of someone working in his office. The answer was that he was swamped with work, even after nearly two years. The Wizarding world seemed more or less recovered on the surface but its wounds went deep, and Kingsley never stopped trying to heal them. “He’ll be Minister for years to come,” Percy said assuredly. There was no blind devotion in his tone, now, just a healthy respect and admiration for his boss. For once, Percy had a boss who deserved it.

After over an hour, they all agreed that their respective jobs needed to be got back to, and they headed back towards the door and out into the rain. Ron pulled his robes up over his head again but George resigned himself to getting wet. 

“By the way, George,” Percy said, “you know Mum wants to have a birthday party for you this year.”

George watched raindrops dripping off Percy’s umbrella. “Yeah, she’s mentioned it.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Audrey’s face, openly sincere in her sadness for what his birthday meant for him. She’d never known Fred; never met him—she’d been two years above them at school and in Ravenclaw besides. Funny how life was really and truly moving on: Bill and Fleur were going to be parents soon; and now Percy getting married. Even littler things, like Harry reaching the halfway point in his Auror training, Hermione getting her first promotion at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures… He supposed he could shut himself up in his flat again, like he’d done last year, but birthdays weren’t going to stop, were they? Life wasn’t going to stop, even if he tried his damnedest to make it. 

“I’ll talk to her,” he said, shifting his gaze from the steadily dripping water to Percy’s face. “See if we can’t throw something small together.” Percy looked surprised, and George added quickly, “Mind you, the first is a Saturday; it’s going to be mad in the shop. We’d lines out the door last year and _that_ was during the week.”

“Of course,” Percy replied, still sounding slightly shocked.

“I don’t want her going to any trouble, not after we’ve just had Ron’s birthday,” George went on. Ron looked at him knowingly—well, right, when had he ever taken such a thing into consideration before? But both of his brothers allowed him his dignity. “Listen, we won’t keep the two of you any longer, especially not while it’s pissing down like this––” There was another round of congratulations and hugs, and then George said, “Audrey, see you on Saturday?” to make sure that she knew that ‘small’ didn’t mean she wasn’t invited.

“Of course,” she said graciously, managing to sound both unsurprised and pleased at the same time.

As they headed back towards WWW, the rain began coming down harder, and the two of them quickened their paces correspondingly. “Wonder if Hermione would want to have a Muggle wedding?” Ron mused as they dodged puddles. He’d stopped bothering trying to keep his head dry with his robes, and his hair was now just as matted to his head as George’s.

“Why, proposed to her, have you?”

Ron spluttered for a minute or two before managing to spit out, “That’s not what I meant.”

“No?” George asked pleasantly. “What did you mean, then?”

“I just meant—you know, I mean, _intellectually_ speaking—”

“That should be a chore for you,” George interjected lazily.

Ron glared at him. “I just mean, Hermione’s Muggle-born like Audrey—”

“You _don’t_ say.”

“—so I just wondered, that’s all. There’s probably Muggles she’d want to invite to her wedding, right?” Ron looked uneasy, and George couldn’t resist one more jab at him.

“Maybe she’ll marry a Muggle,” he remarked, “then it won’t be much of an issue, will it?” The ill look on his face made George add, feeling a twinge of guilt, “Then again, I don’t much see Hermione doing that.” Ron narrowed his eyes at him, and he said, in a much kinder tone, “Ron. You know she’s just waiting for you to ask.”

“Who says I’m going to ask?” Ron said immediately, though there was a definite bounce to his step the rest of the way back to Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.

Ron— _Ron_ , his little brother Ron—had actually brought up marriage, the marriage that everyone with half a brain could see was eventually coming, but still. _Ron_ had brought it up. George couldn’t resist a wry smile, though he tried to keep it to himself. Life was going on, all right. Life was well and truly going on.


	4. Chapter 4

The first person through the door of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes the morning of the first of April was, to George’s surprise, Parvati. “I just wanted to pop in to wish you happy birthday,” she said, standing on her toes to kiss him swiftly. “Here, I went back in our archives and found this for you.” From her handbag, she pulled out a copy of a page from the _Daily Prophet_ , dated to late April, 1996, that held announcements. On it was noted the day that Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, of 93 Diagon Alley, had opened.

He studied it for a second and then looked at her, smiling. “I never even saw this.”

Looking pleased, she said, “I had a vague memory of Hermione saying something about it at breakfast one day at school, so I checked. Funny the things you remember, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely,” he replied. He remembered every detail of that day, though he supposed there was nothing odd about that. He’d never forget waking up at four in the morning, everything quiet in the still, grey, pre-dawn light, and lying in bed staring at the ceiling, his heart pounding. He’d decided he’d shut his eyes and go back to sleep; he didn’t want to be exhausted on the first day of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes’s life, but his resolve had failed him after less than a minute, and he’d said quietly, “Fred?”

“Thought you were awake,” Fred had answered, and he’d abruptly sat up and swung his legs out of bed. “This is going to be our finest hour,” he’d declared fervently. “This is _it_ , George.”

“We don’t open for five more hours,” George had pointed out.

“So,” Fred had shrugged, “five extra hours to make it perfect.”

Both of them had already thought it was pretty perfect as it was, but the shop brought out their inner perfectionists—their inner Percys, Fred had grimaced—and the five hours had gone by in a flash. And both of them had been riding such waves of elation that it never occurred to either of them to feel exhausted until late that night, after they’d drunk several toasts to themselves with the bottle of Ogden’s Firewhiskey that they couldn’t afford but had bought anyway. Fred had fallen asleep with his head on the counter, his elbow resting against the till, while George had done sitting upright in the chair that they’d pulled out from the back room, his neck bent back at an awkward angle while his hair brushed the wall behind him.

George felt his throat close at the memory and swallowed a little frantically to open it again. It was his birthday, his and Fred’s; he was bound to be—emotional, but he didn’t need his girlfriend to see it.

Sometimes he didn’t know how it was possible to miss someone so much and to keep on with everything.

Parvati seemed to notice something was wrong, because there was a look of sympathy, or maybe empathy, on her face. She’d a twin sister, after all. “Have a nice day, George,” she said softly, reaching up to kiss him. She’d a tendency to avoid touching the spot where his ear had been. “We’re still having dinner this weekend?”

“Yeah, of course,” he said, squeezing her hand for a second.

With another quick kiss, she shot him a smile and left in a tinkle of jewelry, and mercifully, George didn’t have much more time to think throughout the day, because his prediction that the crowds would be mad had been spot on. He worked straight through lunch, though he insisted that Ron and Verity both take at least a few minutes to themselves if they didn’t want their full hour (they refused that and George couldn’t help feeling a sting of bittersweet happiness that both of them loved the place, maybe not as much as him, but close).

Ron and George had discussed extending their business hours just for the day, but in the end had decided to keep their normal Saturday closing of four-thirty. George’s birthday dinner was supposed to be at eight o’clock and neither of them wanted to rush straight to the Burrow the minute they’d closed up. It still took fifteen minutes to shepherd last-minute customers out and ring up their purchases, but when the last would-be prankster was out the door, George locked it and the three of them promptly collapsed onto the nearest flat surface. Verity was the only one who ended up in a chair, and she sighed tiredly as she flailed a hand towards the open till. “I think that was even better than last year,” she announced wearily.

“Seemed like it,” Ron agreed from the other side of the counter, which he was leaning against as he sat on the floor.

“Good thing it’s Sunday tomorrow,” George added. The Pygmy Puffs were trilling softly above him and he reached up a hand to stroke them through the bars of their cage.

The statement was met with sighs of gratitude and for a few minutes, the three of them just sat there, recovering from the previous eight and a half hours. Finally, Verity hauled herself to her feet with a groan and asked, “Do the two of you need any more help tonight?”

“Thanks Ver, we’re fine,” George said. “Go home, have a drink, play a prank.”

She smiled and came over to him, leaning over to kiss him on the forehead. “Happy birthday,” she said fondly. “Don’t think I haven’t got you something, but it can wait until Monday.”

“My employees giving _me_ presents—that’s exactly as it should be.”

She just shook her head, still smiling, and left off the fact that he’d given her a sizable bonus for Christmas as well as a gift, and that he never forgot her birthday. “See you two next week,” she said before letting herself out, leaving the two brothers sitting alone in the shop. 

For awhile, they sat in silence, both recovering their strength. Afternoon sun spilled in through the windows. “Is Parvati coming tonight?” Ron finally asked.

George finally struggled to his feet, holding on to the Pygmy Puff cage for support. “No,” he replied. He hadn’t even thought to invite her. Nor was he wishing, now Ron’d brought it up, that he had. He wondered if that was normal.

Ron shrugged his shoulders against the counter. “Right. I’ll continue keeping my mouth shut to Mum about her, then.”

Making his way over to the till, George said, “Thanks. Appreciate that.” The last thing he needed was his mother asking questions about a girlfriend whom he liked, of course, but wasn’t serious about. Yet. He didn’t even know if that ‘yet’ was appropriate. And it wasn’t that he wasn’t grateful for his siblings most days, but when both Ron and Ginny had scoffed at him for asking them to keep quiet about him and Parvati, Ginny asking, “You didn’t really think we’d say anything, did you?” he’d been reminded that he was _really_ grateful for them. “Why don’t you head home, Ron—I’ll clean up tomorrow.” He paused, then added, “You can help, if you want.”

“I don’t really _want_ to, but I will,” Ron replied, pulling himself up with the aid of the counter. “Hermione and I’ll see you at the Burrow in a couple hours, okay?” With a stretch and a yawn, Ron Disapparated.

George stood surveying his empty shop for a long moment. The shelves looked gilded with the sunlight on them. Maybe they were. He was—and Ron was—not rich, exactly; that was, he didn’t _feel_ rich, because he was a shopkeeper with only one employee, and he was in his own shop, running the till, helping customers, and tidying up seven days a week. But compared to what he’d had growing up…

He smiled sadly. Fred had hated being poor. George hadn’t much cared for it, either, but he hadn’t _hated_ it like Fred had done. They’d made so much money right away—lost loads after they’d had to close and hide out at Auntie Muriel’s and had to go back to owl order—but now, with Ron helping, they raked in the Galleons. Ron’s maths weren’t really rubbish; in fact his younger brother had a business sense that had impressed George from the very start. Several months after he’d reopened WWW, George had tried to pay Harry’s loan back—with interest—but Harry had flatly refused. “You don’t have to be so bloody noble and—and _good_ all the time, you know,” George had snapped at him. Harry’s jaw had moved like he was holding back anger and George had found himself perversely hoping that The Boy Who Lived would punch him in the face. He’d have deserved it. The marvel was that no one had done it to him all that summer.

Then Harry had sighed. “Is it going to be weird between us if I don’t accept this from you? Do you _need_ me to take this from you? I’m not trying to prove something, George, but if you are then that’s fine. I get it, believe me.”

George had just stared at him, the Gringotts banknote for the full amount still clutched tightly in his hand. “We’re not— _I’m_ not a charity case,” he’d said, savagely forcing down the catch in his throat. “I don’t need money.” Not then, at least, because through the course of the summer he’d made up for the losses of the previous year. People wanted to laugh, and the irony was never lost on George that they came to him for that.

“I know,” Harry had replied. “I’m not trying to— Look, like I said, if it’s something you need to do…”

George had silently proffered the banknote to him again and Harry had reluctantly taken it. “Fred wanted to pay it back,” he’d said shortly, and the look in Harry’s eyes had reflected that he’d already known.

For a minute more, George remained standing there, one hand hooked idly around the elbow of his other arm. Fred wouldn’t have been amazed at what Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes had become in the past two years, because he’d never doubted its success. Still, George hoped that wherever he’d gone, he could see just how brilliant it was.

Finally, George shook himself out of his reverie and let himself out of the shop. Once he and his mother had decided that the birthday dinner was happening, he’d promptly asked Tom at the Leaky Cauldron to procure a keg of butterbeer for him, and he walked down to the pub, trying his best to enjoy the warm afternoon. Plenty of the customers that had been in Wheezes were still out in Diagon Alley and he exchanged greetings with a number of them, including a small boy whom he instructed how to use his new pair of Extendable Ears. Then, Butterbeer obtained, he levitated it back to the flat.

With the butterbeer, George decided it was easier to Floo than Apparate, so he lit a fire with his wand, took a handful of his plentiful stock of Floo powder (he preferred Apparition; hardly Flooed anywhere) and tossed it in, then rolled the keg into the fireplace before following himself and saying clearly, “The Burrow!”

He materialised in the fireplace of his childhood home, brushing soot off himself. “Brought a keg of butterbeer, Mum,” George announced to the empty kitchen as he rolled it out. There was no answer and, bemused, George poked his head out the kitchen door to check if his parents were in the garden. They were not, and the house was strangely quiet. His father, George supposed, was probably out in the shed, but he’d expected his mother to be in the kitchen cooking, because his mum could always be counted on, amongst other things, to make far too much food. Mashed parsnips were sitting out on the table and something was roasting in the oven, but those were the only signs of his mother. Unless she’d turned invisible—and he very much doubted that she had, or even that she’d ever want to—she had to be somewhere else in the Burrow.

Moving through the kitchen, he poked his head into the sitting room to check for her there. Empty as well, though there was a pile of tiny, knitted baby clothes in his mother’s favourite chair, with the knitting needles still floating above it, flashing in the sunlight as a half-finished bootie hung from them. The skein of yarn had run out. George pulled his wand out and pointed it at the needles, murmuring, “ _Finite incantatum_.” At once, the needles stopped clicking and fell on top of the already-finished baby clothes. 

Frowning at his mother’s mysterious absence, he swung around to check upstairs. “Mum?” George tried as he ascended the staircase. A tiny, “Oh!” of surprise from his parents’ open door told him where his mother was, and he hesitated for a second on the stairs, wondering with some trepidation if he wasn’t interrupting...er... _something_ between his parents. The absolute silence in the house mercifully suggested otherwise, so he continued the last few steps towards his parents’ bedroom.

His mother was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, photo albums spread out on the rug around her. She was hastily closing the one that had been open on her lap. “George,” she said, “you’re here already—”

George stood in the doorway, frozen for a moment by the sight of the photo albums that Mum had pulled out—and that she was currently attempting to slam shut and cram back into the bookcase. A much younger Fred and George were waving up at him, brand new (well, they’d been secondhand, but at ten years old, he and Fred hadn’t cared) Cleansweep Fives clutched in their hands. As he watched, Fred jumped on his broomstick and sped out of the frame. George remembered their tenth birthday well, and Fred _had_ got right on his broomstick. George had followed a moment later and once they’d been coaxed back, Ron had begged to ride one of the Cleansweeps. Fred had refused, though not without dangling the prospect that he’d acquiesce tauntingly in front of Ron. George had let Ron have a short ride, though.

Then, he saw how his mother was carefully keeping her face averted and he finally processed how thick her voice had sounded. She was trying to push the photo album that had been in her lap back into the bookcase but it kept flopping open, eluding her efforts. “I wasn’t expecting you for another hour,” she said with a desperate sort of cheerfulness that made his heart ache.

Quickly, he came into the room and sat next to her, gently relieving her of the photo album and setting it in his own lap. “Mum,” he said, smiling at her. She gave a watery sort of laugh and George reached up and put his arm around her. Idly, he let the photo album fall open. 

His childhood confronted him—him and Fred, small and full of boundless energy, grinning madly and fairly bouncing round the photos. There were birthdays—their fourth? Fifth? No, fourth, because there they all were at King’s Cross on the next page, after Ginny’s and Percy’s birthdays. Bill, already in his Hogwarts robes, prepared for his illustrious school career, Charlie looking jealous, Percy without glasses, Ron, squirming to get out of Dad’s arms, and the baby, Ginny, waving a chubby fist from the security of Mum’s. Fred and George were climbing on the luggage trolley before Mum motioned at them to get down, her mouth moving soundlessly. Then Charlie’s birthday, Bill home for Christmas—and there were the toy brooms they’d got; Merlin they’d loved those, George had shared his brother’s rage when Ron had gone and broken Fred’s. Ron’s third birthday, and then the two of them again. George flipped to the end of the album, where Ginny was making daisy-chains on the last page while Fred, George, and Ron chased gnomes in the background.

His mother leaned against him. “I meant to be baking your cake,” she said, her voice still sounding thick.

“I don’t need a cake, Mum.”

“Of course you do,” she said determinedly. “I was doing some tidying—lost track of the time...” She looked down at the photo album and this time, the naked grief on her face was unmistakable. “My boys,” she whispered in such a soft tone that George had to strain to hear it. He wouldn’t have if she’d been on his bad side.

“You’ve still got us,” he said bracingly. “Though I’ll admit it’s not always easy picking up Fred’s slack—”

She looked at him swiftly, her eyes bright but suddenly blazing. “George, you are _not_ —no one, _no one_ , is expecting that you—has _ever_ expected that you—”

“Be Fred as well,” George finished for her. “Yeah, I know. Just a joke. Pretty poor one, I guess.”

Mum sighed and wrapped one of her arms around him, but he’d no illusions that she was comforting him. It’d been the other way round for years; well before he’d lost the ear. Fred had been rubbish at it, after all, and with Bill and Charlie gone, and Percy in his traitorous git phase, that had left George when Dad hadn’t been available, which thank God he nearly always had been. “You’re a good example to me, Georgie,” she said, a slight quaver still in her voice, though she was sounding better.

George grinned. “C’mon, Mum, you don’t really think I’m going to fall for that, do you? On April Fool’s Day?”

At that, his mother finally laughed. “I forgot! As silly as it sounds, I actually forgot.”

“Now, _that’s_ depressing,” George grimaced.

She looked up at him and smoothed his hair down, her eyes going for a second to the earless side of his head. He’d been taller than his mother since he was twelve years old; not that it had ever mattered. She didn’t need height to dominate her household. “I do mean that, George—you’re a good example.”

“I’m not a good example to anyone,” he scoffed. And nor did he want to be.

With a smile, she said, “All right, dear, if you say so.”

“I do,” he said firmly, patting her on the shoulder. Then, he got to his feet and offered her his hands to help her up. “Seriously, the only tears you should be shedding on my birthday are tears of rage. Like the time we blew a hole in our bedroom ceiling, remember?”

Thankfully, she laughed at the memory and didn’t react to or remark upon his mixed pronouns. Taking his offered hands and standing up, she remarked, “I think that was the only time I ever scared the two of you into listening to me.”

“Of course; you said if we did it again you wouldn’t let us go to Hogwarts in the autumn.” Ironic, that, considering in the end she’d been threatening punishment if they _didn’t_ go back to Hogwarts. “We were going to sneak onto the train when you and Dad weren’t looking if it turned out that you’d meant it. Figured we could count on Charlie not to tell on us.” He was pleased that he got another laugh from her, shaky though it might have been. He knew that his and Fred’s— _his_ birthday was just as difficult for his mother as it was for him, it was only that they dealt with it in very different ways. Impulsively, he leant down to hug her; she squeezed her arms around him tightly.

“I’m happy you came tonight, George,” she said.

He gave her a peck on the cheek. “Happy to be here, Mum.” Which was not strictly true. Part of him would’ve still preferred to be shut up by himself, but he was never going to get on with his life if he couldn’t…well, start getting on with his life. Letting his family celebrate his birthday seemed like a good start to that.

They heard the door open downstairs and Dad called, “Molly?”

“We’ll be down in a minute, Arthur!” she called back.

George waited for his mother to leave the room first before he followed. In the doorway, he paused, and took his wand out. With a wave of it and a muttered incantation, the photo albums shuffled themselves back into place on the bookcase. Then he clattered down the stairs after her, hit, as he did it, by a profound wave of déjà vu. The staircase induced a sort of tunnel vision—it was always the same rug at the bottom of the steps; always the same view to the opposite wall over the top of the couch and the little table were his mum always kept a vase of flowers cut from the garden. It could be any time in his childhood, coming down the stairs, because the Burrow hadn’t changed, really; not ever in the last twenty-two years. His parents lived here by themselves now, obviously, though with the six children, plus spouses/significant others, the house rarely only had the two of them in it. Soon the baby’d be there, as well. Mum was going to be over the moon about it.

The clock, obviously, was gone. The last time George had seen it was the evening of the first of May, 1998, when it had got left at Auntie Muriel’s. He didn’t know where it had gone, and he didn’t want to.

“George, I didn’t know you were here!” his dad exclaimed as George followed his mother into the kitchen; he gave him a brief hug and said, “Happy birthday, son.”

“Thanks, Dad,” George replied, trying not to feel awkward with all the attention. He and Fred had got used to celebrating their birthday at school and the well-wishes felt strange. Overly effusive and a shade too hearty; maybe not entirely genuine…

No, he knew that last bit wasn’t true. The last time they’d all lived together—with Auntie Muriel—their birthday had passed practically unnoticed. No one was thinking about birthdays. They were thinking about Ron, and Harry, and Hermione, not to mention Bill and Fleur, out alone at Shell Cottage, and all their friends besides. They all barely kept track of the date, anyway. The two of them hadn’t let it pass uncelebrated, obviously, but it’d been muted and quiet. The next day Mum had realised she’d forgotten and baked a cake, clearly feeling guilty—they’d said don’t—and Auntie Muriel had said it wasn’t fluffy enough. Ginny’d suggested chucking a dungbomb into her room once she’d gone to sleep and they would’ve, Fred especially, but George had finally said, “Mum’s got enough to worry about without Auntie Muriel shrieking at us.” The other two had reluctantly agreed that this was true.

“Can I help with anything, Mum?” he asked.

“No, of course not,” she said, shooing him away. “I’m sure everyone will be here soon.”

As if on cue, green flames flared in the fireplace and a body appeared, spinning, before Ginny stepped out and said brightly, “Hello, Mum, Dad—happy birthday, George—” while embracing and kissing all of them on the cheek. “I came direct from the stadium,” she said, “Harry said he’d be along soon, though.”

“Ginny, they aren’t really making you train at weekends?” his mother asked in a horrified voice.

“Just for a few weeks,” Ginny replied breezily. “What can I help with here?”

Mum looked disgruntled at the news that Quidditch was at least a six-day-a-week activity, but she said, “You can start peeling potatoes, if you don’t mind.” Then, she glanced over her shoulder and asked, “Arthur—outside, do you think?”

“I’ll get the tables set up,” Dad said.

George opened his mouth to offer his help again, but his mother cut him off, “Why don’t you go sit in the living room, dear? Have a glass of butterbeer—” A glass floated to his hand and filled with said beverage while his mum shooed him out of the kitchen. Ginny shot him a sympathetic smile—Mum’s behaviour at the minute wasn’t so different from that of Ginny’s seventeenth birthday, which they weren’t too far removed from. He stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered back into the sitting room, straightening up his mother’s knitting, which she seemed to have forgotten about, and moving it off the chair. Then he sat down, staring at the spot on the wall where the clock had hung. There was still just an empty space there. Fitting, he couldn’t help thinking bitterly.

There was a _crack!_ as Ron and Hermione suddenly appeared in the middle of the room, Hermione’s now-famous beaded purple bag hanging off one shoulder. “Dead useful, that is,” he remarked before they’d turned around and seen him. Hermione jumped and whirled to face him. “Keeping my presents hidden in there, are you?”

“What makes you think it’s more than one?” Hermione asked, though she was smiling. The two of them went into the kitchen to greet his parents but Hermione soon returned. Ron, evidently, had been recruited to assist with dinner.

Hermione seated herself on the couch. “Ron said it was a busy day at the shop.”

“Mad,” George said. “And I s’pose you just laid about all day?”

“No, of course not,” she said sniffily, as though the idea of spending a Saturday relaxing was highly offensive. “I’ve been working on a report for Mr Diggory.”

“ _For_ Diggory?” George asked, raising his eyebrows. He was all too familiar with Hermione’s opinions on her boss’s attitudes towards house elves, as well as the fact that she’d been working diligently to change them since she’d started at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

Hermione pursed her lips and shrugged, acceding his unspoken point. “If I can just convince him, then I’m sure he’d co-author the legislation that I’m drafting.”

“Yeah? And how’s that coming?”

“I’m sure I’ll wear him down eventually.” At that, George snorted. Hermione smiled quickly at him. “I feel a bit useless just sitting here,” she admitted, crossing and uncrossing her legs. “Mrs Weasley, are you sure we can’t help?” she called.

“Of course, dear!” Mum called back.

A moment later, Ron came into the sitting room, followed by Harry, who’d apparently Apparated into the kitchen. “She says she’s got enough help with Ginny there,” Ron said by way of explanation.

“Bungled the buttered peas, didn’t you?” George asked, and then, in the same breath, “All right, Harry?”

“Hey, George,” the younger man said with a grin. “Happy birthday. And I think it was the roast beef he was bungling.”

“Never liked roast beef anyway,” Ron grumbled.

“Oy, whose birthday is this?” George asked.

The five of them sat around talking until the remaining Weasley siblings arrived (with the exception of Charlie, who’d sent an owl several days previously saying he’d be out in the mountains for the next month). Percy and Audrey arrived by Apparating but Bill and Fleur, what with her in such an advanced state of pregnancy, Flooed. Soon, all eight Weasleys, plus a Potter, Granger, and Wells, trooped outside to eat. Dinner was huge, the company was good, and the atmosphere was genuinely festive and loud. It was the first time they’d all got together since Percy and Audrey had got engaged, and the subject dominated the conversation. After everyone else had toasted George’s birthday, Bill stood up and proposed a toast to Percy and Audrey, which they all happily drank to.

“It’s your turn next, George,” Bill said with a grin once he sat back down. “You need to find yourself a girl.”

George snorted. “Don’t start planning any weddings for me. I think it’ll be a good long while.” At that comment, Ginny glanced towards him sharply. His mum either hadn’t heard or was ignoring him.

Fleur, one hand resting on her belly, smiled at him. “Do not say zat, George. You will be surprised, I think.”

“Hm,” he said noncommittally.

She looked like she wanted to say something else, but in the end left off, just smiling knowingly. George tried not to let himself feel irritated by it and mostly succeeded—it was impossible, for the male family members at least, to stay annoyed at Fleur for more than about thirty seconds.

After cake came presents. Goggles from Charlie—the same kind that he used on the job in Romania, with a note that read, _So you don’t lose an eye as well—I’ve seen what some of your potions can do_ ; from Bill and Fleur, a tie made of Acromantula silk that they’d got in France (Ron eyed it warily, as though it was somehow going to produce an actual Acromantula); from Percy—and Audrey, bless her, had agreed to put her name on it—a book on cauldron varieties, which he supposed was the closest he could get to a whole book on cauldron bottom thickness. Though, George had to admit, it looked like it’d be useful knowing what potions would do what to his cauldrons. He was replacing them constantly. Ginny and Harry had got him season tickets for the Holyhead Harpies, plus the nicest set of Omnioculars he’d ever owned. Ron and Hermione’s present was a wizard’s chess set made of polished mahogany, with dragon’s tooth chessmen (“I can’t believe you don’t have a set; pathetic, that is,” Ron scoffed). His mum and dad had got him a new set of dress robes; a dark blue somewhere between navy and indigo. “I’ll wear them to the wedding,” he promised, running his hands over them. 

He thanked everyone profusely, and then it was time for cake, despite the fact that all of them were still well stuffed from dinner; a massive chocolate cake dripping with frosting and aglow with candles. The whole thing was really a bit much; George couldn’t help feeling as though a lot of fuss was being made over nothing. People turned twenty-two every day. There was nothing special about his doing so. But then, everyone was happy; even, he thought with a start, him. So maybe it was worth it after all.

The family naturally split into its constituent pieces as the evening went on. Bill, Percy, and Dad fell into a discussion about politics (“Look, I think Scrimgeour proved that being Head of the Auror office doesn’t _necessarily_ a good Minister make—”), while Mum and Fleur discussed the impending arrival of the new baby, as well as preliminary wedding planning, since Audrey flitted back and forth between both conversations.

Ron, Hermione, Harry, Ginny, and George ended up out in the garden as evening fell, bringing their glasses of butterbeer with them. Gnomes capered along the edges of the flowerbeds, staying out of the reach of George’s feet. Ron was successful once lobbing an apple core at one of them, which made the men roar with laughter and the women look on disapprovingly, though Ginny had to quickly cough and turn her face away to hide her initial outburst of laughter. Grey clouds streaked across the sky in red-lit trails as the sun sank beneath the horizon.

“Shame it’s getting dark; we could’ve played a game of Quidditch,” Ron remarked.

“We could drink something stronger than butterbeer and I reckon we’ll be up for it,” George replied, lazily taking a swig of said beverage.

Ginny stretched her legs out in front of her, holding the soles of her bare feet just above the blades of grass. “ _You_ lot might; I’m not about to play in the dark and risk an injury, though.”

“Hermione’ll play, right?” Ron asked, nudging her with an elbow.

She laughed. “Yes, of _course_ —I’m rubbish on a broomstick; I can only imagine the disaster I would be at night. I’ll leave the two of you to it.”

With a shrug, Harry said, “I’d play.”

“There probably aren’t even enough broomsticks,” Ginny remarked.

Ron counted on his fingers. “Bill’s, Charlie’s—he got the new one when he went off to Romania, didn’t he leave the old one here?”

“Yes, but that’s still only two,” Ginny pointed out.

“Fred’s,” George added. “Fred’s Cleansweep.” All heads pivoted towards him, then just as abruptly turned to look anywhere else. “Stop it, you lot,” he said irritably. “What use have I got for two broomsticks? Of course I brought it back; I reckoned there’d be some grandkids eventually who could use them—stop looking at me like that,” he cut off to add, at no one in particular, and all of them. Ginny and Hermione, in particular, had both got teary looks on their faces and looked as though they were… _proud_ of him. “Merlin’s saggy—I’ve not _done_ anything; it’s just an old broomstick, which to be perfectly honest never really recovered from its breakout from Umbridge’s office. Always had a bit of a list to the right after that.”

“George, we know,” Hermione said, addressing what he _hadn’t_ said more than what he had. At least the teary look had gone.

He looked around at them, his siblings and his two inevitable future in-laws—his own childhood friends—and grumbled, “I reckon you do.” And meant it.

“Well,” Hermione said, breaking the silence briskly, “that still leaves the problem of the three of you likely killing yourselves flying about in the dark.”

“Be kind of funny, wouldn’t it?” Ron grinned. “I mean, the bloke who defeated You-Know-Who, snuffing it playing two-a-side Quidditch?”

“Excuse me,” Ginny laughed, “who else’ve you volunteered to play in this death-defying game of yours?”

The three men spent the next few minutes trying to persuade Ginny or Hermione to join in, but finally Ron threw his hands up in defeat and announced, “Fine; we’re going to get some more cake,” as Harry stood up and stretched. “Anyone else want any?”

There was a chorus of ‘no’s’ from the rest of them, though Hermione got to her feet as well and said, “I’ll have another butterbeer, though.”

“I’ll get it,” Ron offered, but Hermione kissed him on the cheek and said, “I know you won’t have a free hand by the time you’ve got all the birthday cake you want.”

“You’re encouraging him stuffing his face,” Ginny said warningly, which was met with a laugh from Hermione as they started back towards the house.

For a moment, Ginny and George sat in silence. The gnomes, their audience greatly diminished, were settling down, though every now and then they’d do something to make Ginny giggle. As the twilight deepened and turned to night, frogs began to trill. Ginny set her empty glass down on the grass, and as she straightened back up, she asked finally, “Are you having a good birthday?”

George considered that for a second before answering. “You know, actually, yeah.” He looked over at her. “It hasn’t been too terrible.”

She reached over and patted his knee. “Not too terrible’s a good start, I suppose.”

“Or a good end.”

“Was it a bad day?”

He looked over at her. “No. For a bad day, it wasn’t so bad.”

Ginny nodded and neither of them said anything for a moment. Then, she asked curiously, “Why didn’t you bring Parvati tonight?”

George shrugged, slouching further in his chair to look up at the starry sky. “Because I’m not anywhere near a bringing-her-round-my-parents’ stage with her yet,” he replied.

Ginny remained silent for another minute. “Do you think you’ll ever be?”

“Dunno.” He shifted slightly in his seat and glanced at her. “Why do you ask?”

She pressed her lips together. “Something you said earlier. To Bill. I understand that you don’t want Mum fussing over your love life, but you looked like you’d forgotten all about the fact that you’ve _got_ a girlfriend.”

For a few minutes, he didn’t respond to that, not mulling over it so much as feeling the truth of it. “I dunno, Gin,” he sighed. “I’m not exactly right—you know, in the head,” though when he said it, the gesture he made was more towards his heart. “But I don’t mind ending up everyone’s funny bachelor uncle. It worked for Uncle Bilius, didn’t it?”

With a small laugh, Ginny agreed, “Everyone loved Uncle Bilius,” though the lights from the house reflected off a certain sadness in her eyes. The door opened and Ron, Harry, and Hermione came back outside, avidly discussing something. Ginny glanced over her shoulder, then abruptly stood up and walked behind his chair. She hugged him around the shoulders and said quietly, “I love you, George; you know that, right?”

“Of course I know; c’mon, Gin, don’t be so girly. You’re embarrassing both of us.” Nevertheless, George reached up an arm and gave her a hug as best he could.

“You’re not fooling anyone,” she said fondly.

“Just myself,” he replied cheerfully, and she laughed and sat back down as Harry, Ron, and Hermione returned. Ron and Harry ate their enormous pieces of cake while George fiddled with his new Omnioculars, zooming in on Ron’s mouth and then playing it back in slow motion, expounding loudly on his abnormally messy chewing. Finally, Ginny relieved him of them and told him firmly that he could have them back when he left.

“Which, speaking of…” Harry said, glancing back towards the house.

“I thought we were playing a game of Quidditch!” Ron objected.

“In the dark? Really?” Harry asked.

“He’s lost his bottle now,” Ginny commented, grinning at her boyfriend.

George stood up. “Let’s. C’mon; if we fall and break our arms we’ll just have Hermione patch us up.”

“Me?” Hermione laughed, though she followed them as they got to their feet. 

Harry Summoned the three broomsticks from the shed and the five of them made their way up to the paddock mostly in the dark, with their wands and the Burrow’s lights and the stars to see by. All in all, George thought, as far as a twenty-second birthday without a twin brother went, the day had been rather a success.

 

* * *

 

The third lunch with Angelina had to be cancelled (an owl arrived in the shop informing him that she expected her training to run late that day) but that same day, Lee Jordan came strolling into the shop five minutes before they were due to close and informed George that the old gang was meeting for drinks later in the week, and would he be interested in coming along?

“The old gang?” George repeated.

“You, me, Alicia, Katie, Angelina, and maybe Oliver; I’ll see how I feel,” Lee rattled off. “No SOs.”

“No Jack Sloper, you mean,” George said, crossing his arms over his chest. From near the windows, he heard Ron say, “Sorry, we’re closing up now, can I help you find something in particular?” and the answer, “Oh, no, just browsing, we’re just on our way...”

“You think Alicia would bring him?” Lee asked, making a face. “It’s sort of awkward having to tell her not to.”

“You’d no problem saying it to me.”

“That’s you,” Lee replied breezily.

Ron came strolling up to the counter, having cleared the shop of all stragglers and locked the doors, saying, “All right, Lee?”

“Wotcher, Ron,” Lee replied, clapping him on the shoulder.

“I doubt it,” George finally answered in reference to Alicia. “She knows we don’t like him.”

“Who?” Ron asked curiously.

“Sloper,” Lee and George replied at the same time, in various tones of dislike.

Ron nodded, then added thoughtfully, “Did I ever tell you he chucked his bat at me once?”

“On purpose?”

“No, of course not. If he’d done it on purpose he’d never have hit me; his aim was awful.”

Lee guffawed at that. “S’pose I’ll have to tell her not to bring him; not that we can say anything bad about him while she’s listening, anyway.” He picked up a trick wand and twirled it in his fingers while he scrutinised George. “What about you and Angelina?”

Giving him a confused look, George asked, “What are you talking about?”

“I mean—oh, damn—” The wand turned into a rubber chicken and Lee dropped it on the floor. Picking it up and setting it at a jaunty angle on the counter, he said, “I mean, you didn’t do your normal reaction to hearing her name.”

“What’s my normal reaction?” he asked, feeling slightly put out that he was obvious enough about anything to have it classified as such.

“You know.” Lee glanced over his shoulder, looking for something, and George Summoned an edible Dark Mark, saying, “There, eat that and stop fidgeting, you’re making me nervous.”

Unwrapping the sweet, Lee said, “Cheers, mate. I mean you’d get a sort of look on your face.”

“That’s just his face,” Ron added helpfully. George brandished the rubber chicken at his younger brother threateningly, and Ron took a step back, grinning widely.

Lee took a bite of the edible Dark Mark, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed, finally saying, “You always seemed really uncomfortable around her. And hearing about her.”

“Oh.” Had he really been that obvious? “I hadn’t really realised—things are fine between Angelina and I. Neither of us will cause a scene relating to each other, if that’s what you’re really asking.”

Lee looked slightly offended and hurt. “I’m not worried about you making a scene; I’m only making sure it’s all right, both of you being there.”

George, after two years, was still not accustomed to this sort of solicitousness from Lee—and not entirely fond of it; it was a good thing that Lee’d the good sense to treat him, most of the time, as though everything was the same. What were they supposed to do? He’d been the twins’ best friend; their dormitory-mate for seven years; he certainly was never about to start talking about feelings, knowing full well this was not the plane the twins had operated on together, and it wasn’t the plane George _wanted_ to operate on alone. “It’s fine,” he assured Lee. “Seriously. So what, Leaky Cauldron then? What day?”

“Thursday,” Lee replied, looking relieved to move away from the topic of George and Angelina.

“Thursday,” George repeated. “All right. Yeah, I’ll be there.”

With a pleased grin, tinged with a bit of surprise—no doubt at George’s unequivocal acceptance of the invitation—Lee said, “Good. See you in a few days, then.”

Those few days passed uneventfully, the normal routine broken only by Ron staying well past midnight one evening as the two of them were caught up in a burst of inspiration for a new product. Not that this, in itself, wasn’t somewhat routine. On those occasions it was almost like having his twin back. Which made it sound as though Ron was some sort of replacement for Fred; that he wasn’t a full partner in Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes on his own merits, and that wasn’t true. It was just the feeling of those late night inventing sessions; the energy of them, that made it seem like maybe, if George closed his eyes, when he opened them, it would be Fred there, instead of Ron.

He didn’t like himself any better after thinking it.

On Thursday night he was late to the Leaky Cauldron, having been detained by one of the many potions that was simmering in the laboratory after it exploded. At least it wasn’t totally unexpected. He’d been wearing his new goggles when it erupted, saving his eyes, and Essence of Murtlap, plus a bit of Dittany, took care of most of the welts on his hands.

Thus, when he arrived at the Leaky Cauldron, it was to see a table for four in one corner already occupied by Lee, Alicia, and Angelina, with one empty seat. “Wood coming tonight?” George asked by way of hello and sliding into the chair next to Angelina.

Lee raised his glass in greeting while Alicia pushed a pint across the table to him. “No,” the latter replied, “extra training.”

“Bell won’t be here either,” Lee informed him.

George lifted his glass and toasted them before taking a swig of the beer. “Who needs ‘em?” he asked with a grin. “We’ll have ourselves a year reunion.”

“I’d’ve invited Patricia Stimpson and Kenneth Towler if I’d known,” Lee lamented.

The other three groaned and Alicia chucked a wadded-up napkin at Lee. “Not Kenneth Towler,” she said, making a face.

“Though Patricia’s all right,” Angelina said fairly.

Lee grinned. “Remember the Yule Ball? She snuck in that flask of Firewhiskey and kept spiking that Beauxbatons bloke’s punch.”

Alicia put her hand over her mouth, half-scandalised and half-amused by the recollection. “They were snogging just outside the portrait hole, remember?”

“You call that snogging?” Lee asked. “Looked more like he was eating her face to me.”

“And he surely didn’t recall a thing the following morning,” George remarked devilishly.

Angelina smiled a little vaguely. “It seems ages ago, doesn’t it?”

“The Yule Ball?” Lee asked.

“The Yule Ball. School. All of it.”

“Being children,” Alicia added, obviously trying not to look morose about it.

George leaned back in his chair and slung one arm over the back of it, angling towards the rest of them. “So shall we all get destroyed and lament the too-early deaths of our childhoods, then?”

Making a face, Alicia said, “Let’s not—last time Lee got drunk he stood up on the table and sang ‘The Ballad of Odo’ at the top of his lungs.”

“And he can’t carry a tune to save his life,” Angelina added. “Which we unfortunately learnt firsthand.”

Lee shrugged. “Obviously I wasn’t sloshed enough.”

“That’s true,” George said, “your singing voice improves with further imbibing, but on the other hand, your sense of rhythm really starts to suffer.”

“He provides his own with his hiccoughing,” Alicia giggled.

Taking a gulp of his beer, Lee said, “Look who’s talking, Johnson. _Your_ rhythm sure doesn’t suffer after a few.”

“What does _that_ mean?” George asked, and then added, mostly joking, “Do I want to know?” Lee and Angelina seemed…unlikely, but not impossible.

“It means I’m a smashing dancer,” Angelina replied, glaring at Lee. “Hammered or otherwise.”

“But better hammered.”

She waved a dismissive hand. “Matter of opinion.”

Lee leaned towards her across the table. “If you’d dance with me sometime, I’d probably be a better judge.”

“I’ve got a rule never to dance with friends,” she replied breezily, though the smile on her face said that she appreciated this carryover from their school days.

“Think she’s got a rule never to dance with _you_ , mate,” George said in an amused voice.

Lee put a hand over his heart but couldn’t quite keep the grin from his face. As the evening went on, George couldn’t help but marvel at how easy it was to slip back into the camaraderie that the four of them had always shared, even if their group was missing its fifth member. He supposed that the miracle was not that they could carry on with one of them missing, but that only one of them _was_ missing. In the past, being with his school friends had only made him feel Fred’s absence even more acutely, and he hadn’t always been exactly…sociable. Something had changed, though, and he didn’t know what. But he wasn’t complaining. Lee and Alicia occasionally looked relieved to see him laughing. Angelina, when he caught her watching him, just looked thoughtful.

When they all agreed to finish their drinks and head home, George actually felt somewhat regretful about it—a first in a long, long while. “We’re meeting on the second at Lee’s place,” Alicia said as they donned their jackets and stepped outside. Lee and George followed Alicia and Angelina out to Charing Cross Road. “Think you can come, George?” Despite the invitation, there wasn’t much hope in her voice that he’d accept, and he did exactly what she was expecting him to, and turned her down. It didn’t stop her sighing, though her eyes flicked between him and Angelina oddly. “If you change your mind...” she added, trailing off.

“I’ll have to stop by and get a Deflagration Deluxe,” Lee remarked.

“I’ll set one aside for you,” George assured him.

“Thanks mate. Angelina, walk you home?”

Angelina gave him a half-exasperated, half-fond smile. “Alicia’s walking me home,” she replied, looping her arm through Alicia’s a bit ridiculously. “You can come if you want to, though.”

Lee waved a hand. “Nah. I reckon the two of you can look out for yourselves.”

“But neither of us could do alone,” Angelina muttered, rolling her eyes.

“I didn’t say that!” Lee objected in an outraged tone.

Alicia pulled on Angelina’s arm to stop her retorting. “See you next week, Lee. George…sometime soon?”

“Definitely,” he replied.

With a nod, the two women set off down the footpath. Lee clapped George on the shoulder and said grandly, “Till we meet again,” before glancing surreptitiously around for any Muggles and, seeing none, Disapparating with a _crack!_ George stood for a moment with his hands in his pockets, breathing in the damp air and petrol fumes, before he turned to go back inside the Leaky Cauldron and re-enter Diagon Alley.

“George, wait a minute!” he heard suddenly. Angelina was hurrying back to him, looking sheepish. He did, waiting until she’d reached his side, and for a moment they stood staring at each other while she fiddled with the zip on her handbag. Alicia kept her distance, looking anywhere but at her friends. “I forgot; I wanted to wish you happy birthday,” Angelina said, unzipping her bag, “and I’ve got something for you.” When she pulled out a small package wrapped in an old _Daily Prophet_ , she added, “It’s not much. Just something silly. To prove that I remembered.”

George took the package and flashed a smile at her. “Why, Angelina. I never doubted that you did. Especially after Fred and I nicked all your clothes out the window seventh year.”

“Quite,” she said drily. “One of your finest moments. Alicia insisted it was because the two of you really liked me.”

With a smile, he remarked, “I suppose Fred learnt to show it a bit better.”

A sad smile flitted across her face but it was gone quickly. “Go on, open it,” she urged him, and he shrugged and started to. 

“It’s stupid,” Angelina said, keeping up a patter of conversation while he tore the newspaper off to find a Muggle fake nose and glasses. “But I thought—well, if you ever just want to be someone else, in case you get tired of people looking at you and seeing Fred, or wanting to see Fred.” He could see her watching him closely. “They shouldn’t, but sometimes people forget. Sometimes even the people who know the difference—who know better—forget.” At that, he raised his eyes to meet hers. There was no anxiety in her face, no concern that he’d misunderstand and take this the wrong way, only a sincere, rueful openness that looked to him rather like an apology.

He wanted to tell her there was nothing to apologise for but he knew that wasn’t the point. Instead, he pulled the packaging apart and stuck the nose and glasses on his face, then struck a gallant pose for her. “How do I look?”

“Handsome,” she said, her smile returning.

“Yeah?” He wiggled the left arm of the glasses, hanging free with no ear to rest on. “Bit wobbly, aren’t they?”

Laughing a little, she said, “Try a Sticking Charm; here—” She took a step towards him and put her wand to the side of his head, holding his hair out of the way with her other hand.

He held very still. “You know, it’s not every wizard who’d let you point that right at his head—oy, this isn’t going to be a Permanent Sticking Charm is it?”

With a snort of laughter, she said, “If it was _actually_ your birthday today…”

“Cruel.”

“Well, I learnt from the best, didn’t I?” She muttered the incantation and stepped away from him again, admiring her handiwork. “Still a bit lopsided,” she said critically. “Hard to get them properly straight from that close. But I still think it’ll do.”

There was a muffled guffaw from about fifty feet away; both of them turned and saw Alicia facing away from them, her shoulders shaking suspiciously. “How about a second opinion, Alicia?” George called to her.

She turned around, giggling. “Brilliant, George.” Then she crossed her arms over her chest and half-turned away again, resolutely giving them their privacy, though he didn’t doubt that she could hear every word they were saying. Not that they were having a private conversation, him and Angelina.

Angelina pursed her lips in an amused smile as she glanced at Alicia, and then she turned back to George, her expression growing more serious, which was no easy feat, considering he was currently wearing fake glasses with an enormous plastic nose and bushy mustache attached to them. “The second’s a Tuesday,” she remarked. The ‘of May’ bit went unspoken. “Shall we postpone our lunch?”

“I think we’d better do,” he said, feeling a twinge of regret about it.

A couple exited the Leaky Cauldron and Angelina stepped closer to George to move out of their way. When she looked at him again, he arranged his features into a dolefully casual look, stroking his fake mustache thoughtfully, and she snorted with laughter. “See you in a couple weeks then, Weasley,” she said.

“If you can recognise me, Johnson,” he replied.

She grinned swiftly and reached out, touching him fleetingly on the arm. Then she turned and rejoined Alicia, who waved one final time at George, and the two of them disappeared down the road.

George kept the fake nose and glasses on till he got back to his flat, enjoying the amusement that it gave to the people he passed in Diagon Alley. After all, he made people laugh for a living.

 

* * *

 

Despite not being anywhere near a bringing-her-round-his-parents’ stage with her, George continued seeing Parvati, usually more than once a week. One night towards the end of the month, the two of them had dinner and returned, afterwards, to her place. All through their meal he’d felt flat and distant, and he didn’t know if it was because his least favourite day of the year was fast approaching or if something else was bothering him. He hadn’t been able to quite put the short conversation he’d had with Ginny about Parvati out of his mind and he’d found himself thinking about it, in quiet moments when his mind wasn’t preoccupied with other things, without meaning to. 

The truth was, he and Parvati weren’t serious, and he couldn’t picture them _ever_ being serious. He enjoyed her company loads, not to mention her…er… _company._ But there was something missing, something that George didn’t think he’d ever even felt. He felt stupid even thinking about what that might be, so in his mind it was simply _it_ —the ‘and’ in all of the couples he knew, Bill and Fleur, Percy and Audrey, Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny. Fred and Angelina. That conjunction that was more than just a loose joining of two names. And he didn’t want to lead Parvati on—she deserved better. 

He wasn’t sure exactly what he was waiting for to make his mind up one way or the other; in fact, he wasn’t even exactly conscious that he was waiting for something to make his mind up. _That_ realisation hit him as they sat on her couch, his arm around her, and they talked about some serious issue or another; things Bill and Percy would’ve cared about, but not George, particularly. He only wanted to make people laugh.

“Ron and I’ve been thinking about a Hogsmeade branch of the shop,” George said during a lull in the conversation. They didn’t talk much about WWW beyond being polite. He didn’t think it was that she wasn’t interested, precisely—more that she didn’t think about all the minutiae that went into running a shop; how even when he wasn’t thinking about it, part of him was _always_ thinking about it; always on the alert for a new idea or a flash of inspiration. As far as she was concerned, he had a job. She didn’t understand how much of his life it took up. 

He didn’t much expect her to offer any kind of advice, but he was surprised by how disappointed he was when all she said was, “That will be a lot of work. Oh, are you going to any of the memorials next week?”

“Er, no,” he said, startled by the question for a moment before he remembered that of course Parvati wouldn’t know that he hadn’t done the previous year; how he couldn’t stand the idea of the sombre atmosphere and the soft sobbing—both of which Lee had assured him had been there in abundance. “I won’t go again,” Lee had said vehemently when he and George had got completely bollocksed on the second of May, 1999. “Bloody depressing; dunno how any of them would want to be remembered that way, ‘specially not Fred.”

In fact, of his immediate family—counting Hermione and Harry, because they practically were—Hermione was the only one that had gone. George still remembered the way she’d arrived at the shop afterwards, wringing her hair out—apparently it had been raining at Hogwarts—her mouth pressed into a thin line. “How was it?” Ron had asked tentatively, while George had pretended not to listen.

“Bloody depressing,” Hermione had declared, and that had been the end of it. George had been amused, later that evening, that Hermione and Lee had had the exact same comment to make about something. He’d thought that was probably a first and a last.

“I think I might go,” Parvati said vaguely. She twisted her head to look at him, “I was going to ask if you wanted to come with me, but I’m guessing, based on your tone of voice, that you’d rather not.”

“That’s actually putting it pretty lightly.”

She leaned away from him so she could see him better. “It was nice last year. It’s a really nice way to honour—everybody.”

“Yeah, I know.” He could think of at least two people the annual memorials honoured who’d have found the whole thing stuffy and stifling, and at least one who’d have sneered at everyone’s teary speeches. “I think Katie Bell’s going,” he said, trying to be…what? Supportive, or helpful, or something, and suddenly he felt tired. He didn’t want to have any kind of discussion about this—the second of May was an awful day for him; a day that he did not want to have to defend his decisions about. 

It seemed stupid for their differing attitudes about the Battle of Hogwarts memorials to be a deal-breaker, but in that moment George knew that it was. 

He could not be with a woman who could not understand this basic fact about him—he would not go to a memorial, ever. Full stop. He was happy other people enjoyed them, bloody thrilled for them, but he didn’t want to hear the slight tone of admonishment in his girlfriend’s voice. Especially because he didn’t think she even _knew_ she was doing it. For her, a load of witches and wizards in black robes getting up and making solemn speeches about honouring the dead was…was touching and fitting instead of sickening in a way that he could never describe. Parvati had been at the Battle of Hogwarts just as he had; this wasn’t some difference between someone who’d fought and someone who hadn’t. It was just a difference in their personalities, and suddenly it was one that he couldn’t see past.

“Parvati,” George said, hearing _that_ _tone_ in his voice, even though he hadn’t meant to.

Obviously, she heard it as well, because she turned towards him, looking serious and focussed. “Yeah?”

He hesitated. If he hadn’t gone out with a woman in over two years, well, he hadn’t broken up with one, either. “I like you.” He was afraid she’d interrupt, misunderstand, but she didn’t; she only raised her eyebrows and waited for him to go on. “I really like you, but I’m not sure that in the end it’s going to work out between us.”

Parvati’s eyebrows remained arched. “Let me guess,” she said, “it’s not me, it’s you?”

“Well,” George replied, “it’s a bit of both, really, isn’t it?” She smiled, looking a bit like she was doing it against her will, and George added, “Seriously, you’re amazing. It’s just, you know…it doesn’t…”

“Feel right?” Parvati supplied. At his look of surprise, she smiled wryly. “I know. I got the feeling you might be looking for something a little more.”

“Looking for something a little more?” George asked, hoping he didn’t sound as befuddled as he felt by that statement.

At that, Parvati looked surprised. “Yeah, more. Wife material. Aren’t you?”

“I didn’t think I was.”

She gave him the enigmatic smile that had first attracted him to her. “I think you are,” she informed him, “and you just haven’t realised it. And I’m most definitely _not_ looking for a husband at the minute, so…how could we work out, really?”

With a laugh, partly of amusement but more of relief, George remarked, “You’re certainly going to be one of the most understanding ex-girlfriends I’ve ever had.” For a moment, her reaction to his ditching her almost made him rethink the ditching at all, but something eased in him when he thought about being single again. “Well,” he said, “s’pose I should go, then, eh? Let you reclaim your evening?”

Parvati shrugged good-naturedly. “I suppose. Padma’s supposed to be home soon, anyway, so if you want to avoid awkward questions…”

George nodded and got to his feet, grabbing his jacket off the chair, while Parvati followed him and opened the door for him. “It’s funny,” Parvati said as he stood in the doorway, “but after all these years, it’s come true.”

“What’s come true?” George asked curiously.

She smiled. “‘Beware a red-haired man’. Professor Trelawney said it to me in my very first Divination lesson.”

“I hope all of this wasn’t _that_ bad.”

With another of her enigmatic smiles, she replied, “No. Maybe you never noticed—” and here her smile changed from enigmatic to slightly sly, “—but Professor Trelawney’s predictions didn’t always come true.”

George laughed. “I might’ve done, once or twice.” The two of them looked at each other and he felt a knife’s blade of regret slash through him. “Parvati, I’m really sorry it didn’t work out. I like you.”

“I like you too, George,” she said, a sadness in her eyes as well. “I’m sure I’ll find someone I like again, though—and I’m sure you’ll find someone you like better.”

The statement put him in an awkward place, caught between acknowledging the truth of it and not wanting to hurt her feelings by doing exactly that. “Right,” he finally settled on. “That’s how it works, I suppose.” He wondered if he should give her a parting hug but felt strange doing it. After all, he’d just told the woman that he couldn’t see a future with her. Instead, he stuck a hand out. “Friends?” he asked.

She shook his hand, smiling wryly. “Of course. See you around, George.”

The most convenient Apparation point to the building was a disused police box a street over; George made his way to it at a casual pace. A hen party, obviously on its way from one pub to another, passed him, several of the girls exclaiming loudly at his conspicuous lack of ear, and one of the more sober ones shushed them, shooting him a furtive, apologetic look. He returned her look with a small smile to show her he didn’t mind—you got used to the stares, missing an ear. Even in the Wizarding world, you got stares, but certainly Muggles stared more. Who knew how they thought it’d happened to him—some war, some attack, they probably assumed. Well, they were right, after a fashion, weren’t they? Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to throw himself into the Muggle world more fully. Not the casual forays he made, mostly for business, but really and truly immersing himself in it; a world with no You-Know-Who, no Wizarding Wars, no knowledge of him at all. Would it be a good or a bad thing for him?

He reached the police box and let himself in with a surreptitious tap of his wand, then shut it and stood in the dark for a moment. He supposed Muggles probably had their problems, as well. Ah well, he didn’t think he’d survive a day in the Muggle world; anyway he was a Gryffindor, and Gryffindors didn’t run. He had a niggling feeling, anyway, that everyone he needed to survive was already in his life, and it stayed with him as he turned on the spot and Disapparated for home.


	5. Chapter 5

George Weasley did not consider himself to be a superstitious man. Or, as he’d put it to Professor Trelawney in fourth year, “My inner eye’s never been the same since the cataracts.” He didn’t like ascribing significance to coincidences or daily life. But he allowed himself two indulgences on this front every year. One was his birthday, and he rather thought he’d shown a marked improvement this year from the previous one. The other was the second of May. Both had been miserable the previous year. The anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, in particular, had tested all his resolve. It had been like the weeks after Fred’s death all over again—suddenly everyone remembered that he’d lost his twin, and strangers in the shop came up to him offering their condolences all day, and out in the street there was a mingled air of celebration and sadness so that he hadn’t been able to go anywhere without being reminded of what he’d lost, not to mention that he was supposed to be _happy_ ; after all, the Wizarding world was free of You-Know-Who.

This year, at least, he’d managed to keep the shop open all day. 

On his way out the door at six-thirty, Ron hesitated, one hand on the door knob, and asked, “You sure you don’t want to come?” He, along with Harry, Hermione, and Ginny, were meeting some people in Hogsmeade, as George had been given to understand it, and he’d been solicitously invited several times throughout the day.

George waved his brother off as he counted up the till. “Just go on, would you? Have fun. Though don’t have _too_ much fun,” he warned, “as we’re still opening at nine tomorrow.”

Ron still looked unsure but George knew he could count on years of older-brotherly torment to get him out the door. “Yeah, all right,” he said. “But if you did want to come—”

“Merlin’s baggy y-fronts, Ron, would you just get out? Say hello to everyone for me.” George didn’t look up as the door opened and then, shortly afterwards, banged shut. Only when the shop had been quiet for a minute or two did he lift his gaze from the pile of Knuts, Sickles, and Galleons on the counter, at which point he pulled his wand out of his pocket, pointed it at the door, and mumbled a series of incantations. A momentary shimmer was the only sign of his security spells. Then, standing up and stretching, he waved his wand again, sending the sorted coins streaming through the air into the strongbox at the back of the shop.

For a moment, he stood in his empty shop, the shop that he’d dreamed and schemed about opening for years with Fred. The day they’d flipped that sign from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ had been the best of their lives. Two years ago, just after the Battle, he’d insisted on reopening, even though he wasn’t ready to face it alone, even though it was a bloody mess from at least one Death Eater raid, even though barely anyone was venturing into Diagon Alley in that first week or two. Mum had intimated none-too-subtly that he should wait but he’d ignored her. He couldn’t _not_ open it. It was his most tangible link with Fred, and being there felt a little like nothing had changed, even though it so terribly had.

That had been two years ago, though. Now the shop was just as much Ron’s as it had ever been Fred’s, though Ron would never say it and George would never admit it out loud (unless extremely inebriated). Still, that apostrophe on the sign never would’ve been moved, even if George had decided to run the place by himself.

Heaving a sigh, George stuck his wand back in his pocket and walked up to his flat. He thought about making dinner for himself; stood in the kitchen for several minutes looking at the possibilities, and then realised he wasn’t hungry at all and went to sit down on the floor, leaning his back against the couch. Outside, he could hear the occasional Wildfire Whizbang going off, and he just closed his eyes and put a hand over them.

And then, the bell rang.

George wondered who’d be coming to see him tonight after he’d repeatedly told Ron—and Harry, for that matter—to stay away, that he was fine, really, but he wanted to be alone tonight—not to remember Fred; he didn’t need to set aside the time to do that, as he did it practically every second of the day anyway—but to give himself the chance to learn how to be an entirely _new_ person again; a person who was starting the third year of having lost his twin brother.

The first year had been a little funny. At first, time had been interminable, the way it was when you were waiting for something and the minutes just dragged by like treacle, and George guessed he’d been waiting for his own death, as daft as that seemed now. There’d been no conscious longing to die, it had been more that life had seemed so _long_ , and as he’d never imagined life without a twin brother to go through it with, it had consequently seemed impossible. The drinking had helped with that. Erased whole nights sometimes; once or twice it had been a whole day. 

Then the second year had come round, and suddenly it wasn’t so fresh in anyone’s minds anymore—You-Know-Who had been killed a _year_ ago, everyone had buried their dead and was moving on as best they could. George celebrated his first birthday as a solo twin and it hurt to put that year between himself and Fred, like the full stop on the sentence that had been hanging there but he hadn’t been able to finish— _Fred’s gone_. He was twenty-one and Fred would be twenty. For ever. Now he was twenty-two and Fred was still twenty. And so it would inevitably go; nothing he could do to stop it. Time marched on and all that.

He had to accustom himself to the fact that Fred was missing everything and that it tore them apart even more surely than his death had. It was stupid. It was nonsensical. It was how he felt, and Ron and Harry either understood or pretended to. He didn’t want Hermione or Ginny or the rest of his family knowing about this. He knew Hermione did. Hermione, honestly, might have been the reason Ron was so understanding about it. But he didn’t need her to know that he knew. It wasn’t the sort of thing you shared with a girl who used to be your prefect, even if she was obviously going to end up as your sister-in-law.

The bell rang again and George shrugged and got to his feet, resigned to the fact that whoever it was wasn’t going away on their own. He headed out of the flat and down into the shop in none too big of a hurry. If it was Paracelsus’s and their bloody late shipment of potions supplies he’d shut the door in their faces after he got an assurance that he’d get a discount for the massive inconvenience they were causing him.

Agreeably, it was not a slouching delivery man that George could see through the door of the shop, but Angelina Johnson, and he quickened his pace to reach the door and open it. She was looking out at the street when he pulled the door open but spun to face him. “Hi,” she said, holding out a bottle of wine. “I fancied your company tonight.”

“Mine?” George asked, surprised.

“Yeah, well, I reckon _you_ don’t fancy anyone’s company, and that’s always been a good enough reason for me to come round.”

“Funny bit of reasoning, that.”

She tilted her chin imperiously at him, though there was a flash of a smile in her eyes. “Are you going to let me in or not?”

Accepting the bottle of wine from her, he said, “Come on up, then.”

Sometime between her visit in March and today he’d taken it upon himself to clean the flat, having had the idea in the back of his mind that she might stop in again. She didn’t comment on it, but he caught a slight arching of her eyebrows when they stepped inside. “Have you eaten yet?” George asked.

“I’m not hungry,” she said with a shrug.

“Me either.” George uncorked the bottle of wine with a tap of his wand, Summoned two wine glasses (then surreptitiously made sure they were clean), and poured each of them a glass. He handed one to her and held his own up, knowing he should make some sort of toast because it was the anniversary of everything that mattered, but unable to think of anything that wasn’t trite.

Angelina came to his rescue. “To getting on,” she said, with a slightly rueful smile, “even if we don’t always do a good job of it. And of course,” she added quietly, “to everyone we lost two years ago.”

George clinked his glass against hers and they both drank in silence, both of them mulling over their own thoughts. Which, he thought, probably weren’t so different. “Did you go to any of the memorials?” he asked finally.

She shook her head. “I don’t suppose you did, either?”

He grabbed the bottle of wine and motioned for her to follow him, returning to the spot on the floor that he’d been sitting in. Angelina didn’t question why they weren’t using the perfectly serviceable furniture, and George didn’t want to tell her that it was because he’d already broken his wrist once, falling off the couch the previous year after having far too much to drink. Thankfully neither he nor Lee had been drunk enough to think they could repair it themselves.

Tipping back another large mouthful of wine, he replied, “I’m sure it’s really nice for some people—” he knew Andromeda Tonks had brought Teddy the previous year and could only assume that she had done again, “—but that wasn’t Fred. Standing and making solemn speeches about how they gave their lives for our freedom…” He trailed off, thinking about how hollow it sounded even as he said it, when it shouldn’t have. It was true. Fred, Lupin and Tonks, Colin Creevey; all of them. Even old Snape. Not looking at her, he went on slowly and quietly, “I know it was worth it. I _know_ what it’d be like if You-Know-Who was still in power. Probably _all_ of us would be dead by now. But, you know…sometimes I wonder if it _was_ worth it.”

He could see her running a slender finger along the base of her wine glass. “I know what you mean.” She paused, and he glanced up at her. She looked troubled. “I think we’ve all probably had that thought every once in awhile. All of us who lost someone. Yeah, it was bad, but if you’d known what you’d have to give up…was it _that_ bad?”

George snorted. “Of course it was.”

She nodded ruefully. “I know.”

Pausing to drink several mouthfuls of wine, George then commented, “At least Fred’s a hero though, yeah? I mean, we could be like Andromeda Tonks, or the bloody Malfoys, and have a sister who was as big of an evil nutter as You-Know-Who himself.”

“I tell myself that sometimes.”

“It work?”

“Not really. Him being a hero doesn’t bring him back.”

He swiped a hand over his eyes. “I’m sure he’s chuffed wherever he is that he went out in a blaze of glory.”

Angelina drained her glass and promptly poured herself another, then topped off George’s glass. “I imagine so.” She sighed. “Frankly George, I’m sure he’s chuffed that it was him and not you.”

George was convinced of this very same thing. He’d certainly thought plenty about how much easier it would’ve been for him to have been the dead twin and not the living one. He’d never pitied Fred, only himself. “I don’t doubt it,” he replied. “I’d be.” He managed to drain his wine glass much more quickly this time—something about consuming more and more of the stuff that always made it go down more easily—and then poured the last of the bottle into his glass. “I think I’ve another one of those around here somewhere,” he said, climbing to his feet. “People will insist on giving me wine despite the fact that my preferred drink is Firewhiskey.”

“Well, pardon me,” Angelina snorted.

George threw a grin over his shoulder. “Wine is fine socially but I prefer something stronger for drinking on my own.”

“I can sympathise with that,” she muttered.

He removed the cork and held the bottle up, reading the label. “Hey, this is the good stuff. Elf-made. Wonder who gave this to me?”

“And you’re wasting it on me,” Angelina remarked as he returned and poured her a glass.

Grinning at her, he replied, “On the contrary, I can’t think of someone I’d rather share it with.”

“Hm,” she said, raising an eyebrow at him as she sipped it. “Oh, George, this _is_ good, you shouldn’t give it to me; I’ve got no taste for wine.”

“C’mon, Johnson, I meant that.” She looked surprised at his tone, which may have had slightly more vehemence than he’d been aiming for. “I mean,” he said, toning it down a bit, “seriously, you know me; would I have got it out if I didn’t want to share it with you?”

“No,” she acceded, “I don’t suppose you would have.” They drank in silence for a few moments, and then Angelina said, “Oh,” as though remembering something uninteresting. “By the way, Alicia and Oliver are together now.”

George practically choked on his wine. “What?” he finally managed to spit out.

A smile twitched on her face. “You can’t possibly be surprised.”

“Of course I can be,” he said. “What about Sloper? She was still going out with Sloper last week, wasn’t she?”

Rolling her eyes, Angelina said, “Finally realised what a swot he was, didn’t she?” Then, she smiled affectionately. “And no, she wasn’t. I dunno exactly what happened—you know Alicia, she won’t say.”

George snorted and downed another gulp of wine. “You’re talking about our Oliver, right? Oliver Wood?”

“He certainly isn’t _my_ Oliver. You and Alicia can have him.”

Guffawing, George said, “I’ll leave him to Alicia. Think that’ll last?”

Angelina shrugged. “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. She’s been in love with him for ages and it was obvious to everyone but her. But I’m probably not the best judge of these things.”

“Why not?” he asked without thinking about it. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t, only because of the immensely awkward expression on her face. He was tempted to suggest that she drink more wine. “Never mind,” he said. Then, casting around for something else, raised his glass and said, “Well, to Alicia and Oliver.”

“I can certainly drink to that,” Angelina said, and did so. “And speaking of,” she said, once she’d swallowed the mouthful of wine, “I heard you were seeing Parvati Patil.”

George shrugged. “Sort of.”

She was looking at him closely. “Sort of? How cryptic.”

Finishing off the last of the wine in his glass, he replied, “I was, briefly.” Then he shrugged. “I didn’t really want to be a gloomy berk round her ever, and unfortunately, as I often am, it would’ve got difficult to continue with the relationship.”

In response, Angelina only nodded. He appreciated that. Then, she informed him casually, “I ditched Aidan Lynch.”

“Yeah?” he asked.

With a nod, she said, “Yeah.” He wondered if she’d elaborate but wasn’t surprised when she didn’t, instead taking another sip of wine.

George poured himself another glass and swallowed a swig of it, noticing that his ability to distinguish any subtle notes of flavour was diminishing rapidly in favour of the buzzing in his head. “You know what actually made me realise once and for all it wasn’t going to work with me and Parvati?” he asked into the silence in the room. Angelina didn’t answer, but he went on anyway, “She asked me if I was going to a memorial today. Honest question, right? Only it seemed like she should’ve known that I never would.”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “You’re expecting a mind reader?”

“No.” He fingered the stem of the glass and then figured he might just as well take another sip. “Loads of people know I don’t want to go. I dunno. Like I said, it’s stupid, but that’s what it is.”

“You didn’t say it was stupid,” she pointed out.

“Didn’t I?” That’d be the wine. _Have some more, George._ “I meant to.”

She drained her glass, watching him as she did so. When she’d finished, she said, “I don’t think it’s stupid. I sacked off Aidan because he didn’t lose anyone close to him in the War.” She paused. “And he was too short.”

George couldn’t help laughing. “D’you ever get the feeling we just _like_ being miserable?”

“I’m sure we look that way to certain people,” she said, smiling sardonically.

“Aidan Lynch.”

“Parvati Patil,” she shot back.

There was a bang and a colourful shower of fireworks fell by the window; then another and a dragon sailed past. Suddenly Diagon Alley was alight with a rainbow of explosions and echoing with whistles and screeches; even the dragon was roaring (Ron’s idea and an update to the original Whizbang). “Sold through more than three-quarters of the stock in the past week,” he remarked.

She tore her eyes away from the display outside. “You’ve never set off any of your own fireworks on the second of May.” In answer—not that she needed one, as it had been all statement and no question—he just looked at her and raised his eyebrows.

“Don’t you wish you could be happy when this day comes round?” she asked after a long pause.

He laughed harshly. Then, flicking a glance at her, he put a hand to his neck and sighed. “Yeah.” Then, he shook himself. “Merlin’s balls, it’s not— I mean, I _am_ happy. I can be happy.” He glanced at his empty wine glass and then at the second bottle that he’d only just noticed that they’d emptied, and finally towards the kitchen where he had another stashed away somewhere. Then, he decided against it and pushed his glass away, willing his hand to be steady. “It’s all such bollocks, isn’t it, Ange?”

“Which part?” she asked drily. She’d drunk less than him. Maybe he’d been wrong about how deep her hurt went. Or maybe she was just finding it in herself to pull herself out of it. He always thought he was but then something happened—like the bloody second of May, it always came around, year after year—to push him back to the mess he’d been those first few months.

He rubbed at his face with a hand. So time to stop bloody letting it happen. “I can be happy,” he repeated. “You-Know-Who’s gone. There hasn’t been a loose Death Eater on the rampage for over a year. I’ve got almost my whole family.”

“Almost,” Angelina repeated softly.

George met her eyes. “S’pose that’s got to be good enough, hasn’t it?” Then, letting the wine go to his head, he added, “And I’ve got you.” When she looked surprised, he hastily went on, “You and Lee, and Alicia and Katie and Wood. Unscathed and whole.”

There was an odd look on her face and she looked towards the floor, tracing the grain of the wood for a moment. Then she returned her gaze towards his. “Not quite unscathed. But enough.”

He watched her fingers, long and slender and with that Chaser’s strength running through them. She had very nice hands, Angelina did. “S’pose the next generation’ll get to be the ones that’re actually unscathed,” he said slowly, though it made him think of Teddy Lupin with a wince. “Not us.” He thought about that other bottle of wine again, then rejected it once and for all. “Oh well. Guess that was the point of fighting, eh?”

There was a funny look in her eyes. Not teary. Angelina didn’t get teary; she either cried or she didn’t and the only time he’d ever seen her cry was at Fred’s funeral. But if there was a precursor to being teary, a certain shine, maybe, to the eyes, or a slight crinkling of the brow—that was the way she looked, and he saw her swallow hard and then take a deep gulp of air.

Before either of them spoke again, there was suddenly a soft but insistent clicking from behind him. He saw Angelina’s eyes lift towards the window and he turned around to look. An owl was tapping on the glass and George got up quickly to open the window, swaying unsteadily. “That’s Bill and Fleur’s owl,” he announced, feeling a twinge of uneasiness. It was so late; why should they be owling him at this time? Then, he shook himself. The alcohol was making him stupid. This wasn’t two years ago, when a late-night owl meant a family member was in trouble or hurt or God forbid dead; though the Weasleys had been lucky and missed that last one out—they hadn’t found out about their loss via a clipped note.

The owl hopped inside and offered its leg; George unrolled the parchment tied there, feeling his fingers shaking slightly despite the logic telling him everything was fine.

Then, he went very still as he held the letter—well, more of a hastily scrawled note, but that was Bill’s handwriting—and he heard Angelina ask, “What’s wrong?”

He had to shake himself before his throat would connect back to his mouth and allow his voice to come out. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s—I’ve got a niece,” he said wonderingly.

“What?”

He held the note out mutely to her and she got to her feet and took it. “I’m an uncle. Fleur had her baby.” He paused and watched Angelina’s eyes scan the letter. “They’ve called her Victoire.”

Angelina looked at him, an unexpected smile lighting her face. “Victoire,” she repeated softly. “That’s lovely.”

George’s face cracked into a wide grin and he quickly grabbed a quill and scribbled a reply on the back of the note:

 

_Bill, you bastard, well done. Give Fleur and the beautiful baby Victoire a kiss for me. Tell me when I’m welcome to meet the little tyke and I’ll pop round._

 

Then he tied it to the owl’s leg and opened the window back up for it. As it took wing back into the darkness, Angelina came up behind him. “You’re going to be brilliant, aren’t you?”

He turned around to look at her. “At what?”

Her lips were curved in a slight, amused smile. “With a baby. With kids.”

“I reckon as long as they’re not my own I’ll be fantastic, yeah.”

She nudged him with an elbow. “Don’t be a berk. You’ll be a good father.”

The idea of a family—a wife, children—was something that had only vaguely occurred to him once or twice before. Just out of school it had been the last thing on his mind. Fred had been the one with the girl, with the grand plans for five or six kids, maybe a set of twins or two, but George was content with the casual, breezy romances that he’d carried on. What Parvati had said—that he was looking for a wife—had well and truly taken him aback. He’d not been aware of looking for any such thing. But once she’d said it, it’d _made_ him think about it, made him wonder how possible it even was for him. “Need to find someone to put up with me first,” he finally said. “No easy feat.”

With a shrug, she said, “The right woman won’t consider it ‘putting up with’ you. She’ll find your—er, many sterling qualities charming.”

Looking over at her with one quirked eyebrow, he asked, “Do you know this woman, and can you introduce me?” When she laughed, he went on, “Honestly, who in their right mind would want to deal with me on a daily basis, for the rest of her life? _I_ wouldn’t want to deal with me. I reckon everyone who _does_ deal with me is getting compensated somehow.”

“Tickets to Holyhead Harpies matches,” Angelina supplied with a crooked smile.

“Exactly,” he said, “though they must have got something else for you.”

“Where do you think these new trainers came from?”

He snorted. “At least you’re getting something out of this.” For a second, he savoured that he could make her laugh so easily, and then he added, “I don’t say this looking for pity, but, you know, I used to be pretty uncomplicated, and I reckon a lot of different women could’ve made me happy. Not necessarily all at once, though I’d’ve been willing to give that a try as well.” Angelina rolled her eyes. “ Now, I just…” He shrugged. “I just can’t imagine her. And while I’m certain that I _can_ father children, I always rather imagined doing it within the confines of marriage.”

For a moment, she stared at him without speaking. Then, taking him completely off-guard, she wrapped her arms around him and said from somewhere near his good ear, “George, you’re twenty-two years old.”

“Is that all?” he asked, trying to decide whether or not he was supposed to return her embrace. In the end, she pulled back before he came to a decision.

As she pushed a curly strand of hair out of her face, she repeated, “You’re going to be a really brilliant father. Whenever you become one. And you’ve got so much time.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, partly to hide the fact that her certainty about his nonexistent but future family actually made him feel stupidly hopeful. “You’re right about the time bit,” he said. “Maybe I’ll be one of those old farts with a young trophy wife…I could even switch her out once she starts wearing out— _ouch_!” He rubbed his arm where she’d punched him, having foolishly forgotten that Chaser arm of hers. “Bloody hell, woman, how d’you expect me to ever father children if you’ve beaten me beyond all recognition?”

She pursed her lips at him in what looked very much like an attempt not to laugh. “I’m only pointing out to you that you’ve still got time; it’s not a concern of mine personally,” she said airily.

“Obviously not,” he muttered. Then, he glanced round the flat, his eyes settling on the two empty wine bottles and glasses. “Guess we should have saved some wine. Here—wait a minute—” He strode into the kitchen and rummaged around in the cupboard, then grunted as his fingers closed around another bottle, this one half empty. He groped for his wand in his pocket for a minute, realised it was laying on the floor, and pulled his head out of the cupboard to grab a couple of tumblers _sans_ magic, then poured Firewhiskey into both glasses. He hesitated over his own for a moment, letting the alcohol slosh back to the bottom of the bottle and pouring rather less than he normally would have done. Angelina joined him in the kitchen and took her glass, raising it and clinking it against George’s as he said, “Victoire Weasley.”

“Let’s hope she’ll have a better world that we did,” Angelina added, and both of them drank to a little girl who was more than just the next in a long line of Weasleys.

The arrival of Bill’s letter had broken the sadness of the night; the subsuming nature of it, at least. Nothing could ever take it completely away. Angelina stayed and their conversation grew lighter; and when her stomach growled loudly he pulled out a sack of Honeyduke’s sweets. It was almost like being kids again; a thin veneer of joy on an utterly joyless day, until George realised that it was no veneer. Whatever he was feeling wasn’t fake or shallow, just fragile.

Eventually, Angelina yawned and stretched her arms up in the air, saying, “S’pose I should let you get some sleep.” She waved her wand and the myriad wrappers from the now-severely depleted Honeyduke’s sack streamed through the air to the bin in the kitchen.

When he walked her to the door, he stepped outside into Diagon Alley with her. It had quieted down, though people were still out—mostly staggering at this point—and there was a sort of holiday feel even though it was past one in the morning, and technically it was the third of May, now. For a long moment, the two of them stood there, side-by-side between street lamps. Somewhere out of sight, a Wildfire Whizbang screeched. “Thanks for coming round, Ange,” he said.

She didn’t say anything, but her brow twitched and something like tenderness showed on her face. Dim lamplight illuminated her profile and she looked into his face with a gaze full of understanding and sadness and yes, it was tenderness, that was the only word—but not pity. How could she pity him, when two years ago she’d lost the same person that he still mourned every minute of every day?

She hesitated for another moment and then stepped forward and put her arms around his neck. This time, he didn’t ponder what he was supposed to do; he wrapped his own arms around her tightly, not bothering to think about, for once, what she’d been to Fred. She sighed and leant into him, then tightened her grip on him fiercely, till they were clinging to each other on that dark street, not knowing if they were celebrating or mourning the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts.

They stood there for a long time, neither of them making a sound, holding onto the other as though they were each other’s life rafts. Angelina’s fingers clenched his shirt tightly on one shoulder, the tips of her fingers digging into the space between his collarbone and shoulder blade. George didn’t know if they were holding each other trying to draw some sort of strength or—or if something had changed tonight and they were holding on _because_ things were changing, because everything was going to be different now. Only George didn’t know what it was that had changed; he only knew that something felt altered and that there was a kind of lightness in him that he hadn’t felt for—a long time. He didn’t know what was responsible; if it was the birth of Victoire, or something else – or the fact that Angelina had sat in his flat with him and it’d made him happy despite the fact that he was so desperately sad.

Finally, they pulled apart from each other, on some unspoken cue. “Well then,” Angelina said, smiling. It looked like there were tears in her eyes. “You’re an uncle now, George. Looks as though you’ve got a reason to be happy today from now on.”


	6. Chapter 6

In addition to lunches with Angelina—a weekly occurrence which grew to occasionally include dinners as well—George found himself pulled into randomly timed but fairly frequent nights out with Lee, Alicia, Angelina, Katie, and Oliver. Alicia and Oliver were somewhat sickening in their obvious adoration for each other; at least, George normally would have found them so, but for some reason—and he chalked it up to the fact that he was half deaf in one ear, because…well, he needed to chalk it up to something, even if it didn’t make the slightest bit of sense—they weren’t totally intolerable. The first time he’d seen them together, arriving at the Leaky Cauldron at the same time as him, Oliver holding Alicia’s small hand in his, he’d stopped dead in his tracks and just stared.

“What?” Alicia had asked, her smile luminous.

George had just shook his head. “Nothing.” Was it him, or was the crazed gleam in Wood’s eyes somewhat diminished? He posed the question to Angelina while they stood at the bar ordering drinks for the table and she glanced over her shoulder thoughtfully.

“Diminished,” she judged. When she turned back to the bar, her gaze was still thoughtful. “They’ll be good for each other. Well, anyone with a modicum of sanity would be good for Oliver, and Alicia…she likes to take care of people. And Merlin knows Wood needs taking care of.”

He remembered the night that she’d said she wasn’t a good judge of others’ romances and didn’t say now that he rather thought she was. Anyway he knew what she meant—you didn’t really want to admit that what you were bollocks at were your _own_ romances. _He_ didn’t, not out loud, though he knew he was. A week ago he’d gone out with a witch who’d probably been too young for him. His mother would have thought so, anyway, as she was just out of Hogwarts. Disaster was too strong of a word to describe it, but when he’d shook her hand good-night he’d remembered his own words to Angelina—that he used to be uncomplicated and that loads of women could have made him happy.

Standing at the bar with her, he realised wryly that there was a woman who made him fairly happy—but Angelina Johnson was only a mate, after all. She was in the same class as Hermione, really. Though, nothing against Hermione, who was a pretty girl, no doubt, but Angelina was nicer looking; luck of genetics, really—

Their pints arrived at that moment, which arrested that line of thinking. George felt a tendril of relief that he didn’t examine too closely, because he found himself nervous, suddenly, about what he might find if he did.

 

* * *

 

July began rainy—with a thunderstorm, in fact, violent and loud and which roused George out of a deep sleep at midnight as June rolled away into July. For a minute or two he kept his eyes closed as he laid in bed, trying to pretend that he was going to get right back to sleep, before he rolled out from underneath the blankets to go and stand at the window. The bedroom faced out onto the alley between WWW and the next building, but all George could see was rain spattering the glass and running down in torrential rivulets.

He stood there for what might have been three minutes or three hours, watching the water and lightning flashing through it and thinking vaguely about the shop, about the summer, about the fact that people in his life were pairing off and settling down and here he was, single and celibate and not thinking much of women at all except for the nagging thought that when it came to adjectives he applied to Angelina, they tended to all be superlative.

Judging by how tired he was the following day, he wondered if he _hadn’t_ stood at that window watching it rain for three hours—which was sad; if he was going to be up half the night he could’ve at least had the decency to think of something productive for himself to do—because despite a short nap at lunch (which he woke himself up from by toppling off the chair in the stock room), he found himself drifting during a conversation with Ron and Hermione as they were closing up the shop.

“Did you hear me, George?” Hermione asked, peering at him.

“What?” He shook his head a little to clear it. Not only had he not heard what she’d asked, he’d barely been aware she was speaking.

“I said, do you want to come over to my house for dinner tomorrow?” she repeated. Then, without really waiting for an answer, and as an afterthought, she added, “Why don’t you bring Angelina?”

George blinked. “Sorry?”

“Angelina,” Hermione repeated patiently. “Johnson?”

“I know who Angelina is, thanks.”

Hermione’s mouth twitched. “Then you shouldn’t have any trouble inviting her, should you?”

Furrowing his brow suspiciously at her, George said, “You were never friends with Angelina.”

With another twitch of her mouth that George was beginning to suspect was suppressed laughter at his expense, she replied, “No, well, it wasn’t as though we _weren’t_ friends, either. Anyway, you’re friends with her, aren’t you? Bring her. It would be nice to have some female companionship for once, anyway.”

He didn’t ask her why, if she wanted female companionship, she didn’t just invite Ginny to dinner. He wasn’t that obtuse. “All right. But she’s busy, you know. She can’t just go dropping everything for a dinner invitation.”

Hermione kept her expression neutral. “Oh, she never seems too busy for you, George.”

“We just time things right,” George scoffed, looking to Ron, who only shrugged. Hermione had a look on her face that was far too calculating, which he carefully ignored. His half-lucid thoughts from the night before kept intruding and he was getting the distinct feeling that Hermione saw something that he didn’t. Maybe she saw something that he didn’t _want_ to see.

In any case, he did invite Angelina, and she accepted, and when he met her outside Hermione’s immaculately kept row house, he told her, before he thought about it, that she looked nice. “Yeah?” Angelina asked, glancing down at herself as though she couldn’t recall what she was wearing—which was endearing—and then saying, “Thanks. You too. By the way, before I inadvertently make an arse of myself, does Ron live here as well?”

“No.” George depressed the bell and added, “Not technically, anyway, though you wouldn’t know it by all the time he spends here. Hermione must spend most of her free time cleaning up after him.”

“Having seen your flat, I’m not sure I’d talk about other people’s housekeeping,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

He opened his mouth to retort, but at that moment Hermione opened the door and exclaimed, “Angelina, I’m so glad you could come!” For a second, the two women looked like they weren’t sure what they were supposed to do, but then they hugged, and not even too awkwardly.

“Well, it’s been ages,” Angelina said, smiling. “How are you?”

“Good, you?” This exchange of pleasantries carried them right up the stairs and through the door, where, judging by the aroma pervading the house, something delicious was currently cooking. It wasn’t fair, but George was always surprised whenever Hermione turned out an edible meal. Her first couple attempts had been pretty questionable, but she’d got to be accomplished enough at a few dishes. Tonight’s dinner was not only edible, but very good, and Hermione looked pleased and a little embarrassed to be told so (more effusively, of course). 

What stood out in his mind from that dinner, though, was the easy way the four of them passed the evening. Conversation flowed naturally, and George caught himself thinking, once, that this was what it would be like when he was married. That was, _if_ he married. He confused himself now about it, and he was realising that he wanted to be, and he hadn’t forgotten Angelina’s words to him on the second of May, that he was young, and that he had time. Though he doubted Angelina would appreciate playing the role of ‘George’s-future-but-faceless wife’. 

No, Angelina felt like she belonged there because she did, because she was his friend and she meant loads to him. Someday she’d be married too and all four of them, Angelina, George, and of course their future-but-faceless spouses, would sit round and things would be just as natural and easy as tonight.

A tiny part of him didn’t really like the idea of Angelina being married. He put it down to the fact that she’d been Fred’s fiancée in all but name.

 

* * *

 

When, a few weeks later, the owl dropped off the morning _Prophet_ and the post, George didn’t look at it immediately. Had he done, he would have seen the thick, cream-coloured envelope much earlier, and accordingly, he’d have opened it, read it several times without really taking in the words before they finally penetrated his brain, and promptly Apparated over to Angelina’s flat because _what else did one do upon receiving something like this._ It was a good thing that he hadn’t noticed it for an hour after its arrival, because as it was, Angelina was in her pyjamas when she opened the door and George demanded, “I assume you got one?”

Angelina didn’t bat an eye at the vagueness of this, reaching over and grabbing a heavy envelope off the table. “ _Mr John Spinnet and Mr and Mrs Robert Wood request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their children, Alicia and Oliver Wood, at Whitlaw House, Hawick, on Saturday, the 23rd September at 1 o’clock_ ,” she read, and when she lowered it, there was a broad grin on her face, uncharacteristic for this sort of thing.

He stepped through the door and she closed it behind him, still trying to process the invitation. “They’re getting _married_?”

“That’s what it says.” Her smile, if possible, widened even further. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

Some of the shock was beginning to wear off—though it might take years to fully vanish. Certainly until long after the wedding itself. “Why Ange, do I detect a budding romantic in that flinty heart of yours?” George asked, raising an eyebrow.

Her grin didn’t slacken. “You’ve _got_ to admit it’s just a bit adorable.”

“I’ll admit no such thing.”

“ _Wood_ , though, George. _Wood_ getting married. Did you ever imagine it?”

“Imagine? I didn’t need to _imagine_ , I could see it any day I wanted to at school—his mad marriage to Quidditch.” When Angelina laughed, George let his eyes linger on her. Her smile was gorgeous and went through him suddenly like a knife. Funny how she was having that effect on him more and more. Funny and probably wrong. “You’re happy for Alicia,” he remarked, more to say something than because he needed the confirmation. _Banal, George_ , he scoffed at himself. Only Angelina could make him sound so stupid.

“I’m thrilled for Alicia,” she responded. “God knows why but she loves that man, and he’s crazy about her, _that’s_ obvious.”

“Alicia’s a _saint_ ,” George remarked, “that’s the only explanation. Or is she doing it out of pity?”

“Oh, shut it,” she laughed. “Oliver’s perfectly—”

“Don’t say ‘normal’,” George warned her.

“—decent,” she went on without pause, “and they’ll make each other very happy.”

“Huh.” He stared at the invitation that she was still holding. “S’pose that’s about the most any of us can ever ask for, isn’t it?”

Angelina slid the invitation back into the envelope and set it back down on the table. “Well, there’s money and fame and all of that. But Alicia never wanted any of that.”

“Like I said, I fully expect her to be canonised.” George studied his own invitation again. “I’ve barely got used to the idea of them together.”

Angelina put a hand on her hip. “Well, I suppose some people are still in wartime marriage mode, even if it’s been two years. I guess if I—” But then she hesitated.

“You guess if you what?” George prompted her.

With a shrug, she finished, “I guess if I’d found the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, I wouldn’t wait around to get married, either. I already made that mistake once.” A grim look ghosted across her features, but she made a visible effort to cheer up. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I know.” He’d been thinking the same thing, and it surprised him that she’d said it out loud. Back when they’d first started spending more time together, he didn’t think she would have. “I guess that means you haven’t found the right Quidditch player yet?” he added. She’d been seeing…someone, one of the reserve Beaters for the Tornados, he thought. They didn’t talk much about their love lives to each other.

Snorting, Angelina replied, “No. I think this relationship’s doomed, anyhow. I’ve just been trying to think of the right way to sack him off, preferably by the weekend.”

“Well,” George said, “if you’re not going to be tied down this weekend, I’ve a bit of an odd invitation for you. My siblings—two of them at least—and I are having a sort of picnic…thing, and their future spouses, of course, and maybe you’d like to come?”

“Maybe I would,” Angelina agreed, looking bemused. “A picnic?”

“And swimming,” George added. “Have you got a swimming costume?”

“Somewhere. Where in the world are you going swimming?”

“We,” George corrected her. “And you’ll see, won’t you? At least you will if you’re at the Burrow Saturday morning. Eleven o’clock.”

She grinned. “You’ve piqued my curiosity. I’ll be there.”

“Good.” He almost added, _Hopefully you’ll be single_ , meaning, only, that if she wanted to break up then he wished her luck, but luckily, at the last second he realised how it would sound. He didn’t want Angelina getting the idea that he wanted her single for any reasons of his _own_ , even though that tiny part of him, whose voice was getting stronger every day and that he couldn’t seem to shut up, knew that the idea of Angelina being single filled him with stupid, un-actable-upon hope.

 

* * *

 

“Ladies, all packed?” George surveyed the gathering in the Burrow’s living room, noting with approval how Angelina and Hermione seemed to be getting on, as the two of them had been chatting amiably while Hermione prepared bottles of old-fashioned lemonade for them to bring along to their picnic. George, Ron, and Hermione had arrived just as their mother was leaving for a shopping trip; when George said that Angelina might be there for the weekly Weasley dinner, she looked pleased, told them to enjoy themselves, and Disapparated. Harry and Ginny, and then Angelina, had appeared shortly in the yard, Angelina looking around with an uncharacteristic look on her face, almost like a startled deer, before she shook her head, grinned at him where he was standing at the door hollering for her to come in, and did so.

Hermione finished pouring the lemonade into the bottle. “We’re not leaving until _you’re_ changed, George.”

“Sorry?” George asked innocently, and Angelina raised an eyebrow at him.

Hermione put her hands on her hips while Ron and Harry hooted with laughter. “Last time we went swimming at the burn, George decided that our relationship is so familial that he can _strip bare_ in front of me,” Hermione informed Angelina, still glaring at him.

“You’d’ve thought You-Know-Who’d turned up, she screamed so loud,” Ron guffawed.

Ginny hurried down the stairs at that moment, tying her bikini into place; a process which, George noticed, Harry couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from. He either needed to take Harry to task about things like that or get used to it, and he’d a feeling that getting used to it might be the better option, and not just because of Ginny’s temper. “Are we talking about how George exposed himself to poor Hermione last month?” Ginny asked breezily.

“Gin, are you going to put on some clothes?” George asked in roughly the same tone.

She rolled her eyes. “ _How_ you live with your hypocrisy…”

“Somehow I bear up under all of it,” George replied cheerfully as he charged up the stairs to change. When he came back down, he noted again with pleasure that Angelina seemed to be fitting right in with all of them. Not that she wouldn’t, and not, he thought, that her fitting in with his family was any kind of necessity, but still, it was…nice.

As they started the trek across the yard, Angelina began, “So, I still don’t really understand where we’re going. I’ve seen the orchard, I’ve seen the paddock…”

“We call it the burn,” Ron said. “Dunno why, really…”

“Because Mum’s cousin called it that when she came to visit, remember?” George said.

“Oh, right…anyway, Bill and Charlie dammed up a bit of it when they were kids so now it’s sort of a pond.”

George grinned at her. “Think of it as an undiscovered treasure of the vast Weasley estates.”

“They’re vaster than I ever imagined,” Angelina murmured appreciatively.

The walk to the burn passed quickly amidst lively conversation between the six of them, and soon they came upon it. The ground sloped to the water down a grassy hillside. The water itself was clear enough to see that it dropped off steeply to the bottom of the burn. A large flat rock, cleared by Bill and Charlie in childhood, hung out over one part of the water, and green willows sweeping their boughs around the stream kept it hidden from view. Bill and Charlie’s dam had held up remarkably well over the years—of course the rest of them had repaired it, but still. George had always suspected a bit of underage magic had been involved.

They spread the blankets out that they’d brought along, set down the picnic, and decided that swimming seemed in order before they ate. Ginny dove in first, followed quickly by Harry and Ron, and then Hermione. George stripped down to his swimming costume but waited for Angelina to do the same. He glanced towards her, and when her head emerged, tousle-haired, from her shirt, George couldn’t stop staring at her lean body for a second. Her eyes met his, catching him ogling her, and he quickly looked somewhere else as she asked, “What, it’s not too small, is it?”

“Er,” George replied, unsure by whose standards he should be judging. It was a bikini, wasn’t it supposed to be small? _He_ certainly wasn’t going to complain about seeing that much skin. Funny, that, actually. He’d seen Angelina fairly close to starkers in the past, as in school, Oliver Wood had had a tendency to keep them out practising Quidditch so long that sometimes no one had had the energy to care much for privacy. He’d barely noticed her then—skinny, flat-chested, boyish-hipped Angelina. Suddenly he didn’t think he’d seen a more beautiful woman in all his life, despite the fact that none of that had really changed about her. But now, what had been gangly and awkward had become long, toned legs and a slim waist and—well, _flat-_ chested was a bit unfair. She certainly filled out her bikini-top well enough—

“I bought it when my parents took me to the Canary Islands just after sixth year,” she said, tugging at first the top, and then the bottoms, self-consciously, though she couldn’t seem to decide which direction needed more coverage. “Haven’t worn it since then. I don’t swim, really. Don’t laugh,” she said, this last bit added warningly.

“It’s fine,” he said, wondering if he could or should add that she looked dead fit and finally deciding that it was most likely ill-advised. With some trouble, he tore his eyes away.

She still looked uncomfortable and turned slightly to arrange her clothes in a neat pile. As she twisted, bending over, he noticed a scar on the right side of her back—practically a foot long and badly puckered. He found himself staring at her again for an entirely different reason, feeling something burn in his chest—anger, it was; the old anger that he’d felt during the War every time he’d thought of people hurt and dying, his friends especially, while he couldn’t do anything about it. And as he’d never seen such a thing on her before, he assumed that’s where she’d got it. Well, hadn’t they all?

When she straightened back up, he quickly looked somewhere else. She didn’t seem self-conscious about it, but he still didn’t want to bring it up.

“Ready?” he asked her, with a sweeping gesture towards the water.

“You first,” she said, then, with an anxious look on her face, added, “Wait, if I go last, does that mean you’ll all be watching me?”

He guffawed at her nervousness. “Angelina Johnson, Gryffindor, star Chaser, Hero of the Battle of Hogwarts—getting stage fright about swimming. I’m glad I’m seeing this side of you.”

She couldn’t help snorting. “I’ll bet you are. You said you wouldn’t laugh, remember?”

“And I think I’m doing a pretty bang-up job of keeping that promise!” Though he was quite sure she wouldn’t miss the way his mouth twitched. On impulse, he grabbed her hand, allowed a second for her to pull away (she didn’t), and said, “C’mon, I’ll keep you company.”

The resulting splash from their two bodies hitting the water guaranteed that the others couldn’t see a thing.

The burn was over six feet deep—deep enough that not even Ron could touch the bottom while keeping his head above water—but the smooth pebbles that made up the stream bed weren’t far below. The water was cool, perfect for a hot, sunny day, and George couldn’t imagine a better way to spend a summer afternoon than swimming with his five favorite people.

After a good hour, and Ron’s escalating complaints that he was starved, the six of them climbed out of the burn and sat drip-drying on the rock while they shared the picnic lunch. Once Mum had got wind of their plans for the day, she’d gone to work stuffing their picnic basket, and there was far too much food for them to possibly finish. Not that they didn’t try their best.

Eventually, Hermione sighed happily and leaned back. “I’m glad we can do this.”

The others nodded. No need to elaborate that only three years ago, they’d all gone into hiding and this kind of lazy frivolity would have been impossible. And it was too nice of a day to talk about that kind of darkness, anyway. The sun was angling through the leaves, dappling the whole burn with clear, sparkling golden light, and a whisper of a breeze rustled through the branches every so often. It was true—three years ago, wandering off on their own like this, letting their guards down, having _fun_ , fun without counting the minutes until something bad happened, or until you couldn’t keep pretending that something bad wasn’t happening somewhere, to someone you knew if not someone you loved, would have been unimaginable.

“Me too,” Harry said simply, and the rest of them nodded their agreement.

The six of them sat, chatting idly or just sitting in silence, sipping lemonade and picking at the remains of their sandwiches, scotch eggs, and sausages. There was cake too, but only Ron had had a cavernous enough stomach to eat any of it yet.

Clearing her throat and raising her glass of lemonade, Ginny said, “I propose we make this a monthly tradition. We have to make the most of summer while we have it.”

“Seconded,” George said, raising a hand.

“Angelina, are you free next month sometime?” Ginny asked.

Looking a little surprised, Angelina said, “Am I part of the Weasley/Potter/Granger swimming club?”

“Of course!” Ginny replied. “We’re really happy you came.” For some reason, her eyes flicked towards George as she said this.

With a happy little smile, Angelina said, “Well, yeah. I’m sure I’ll have time. Just let me know.”

“George will,” Ginny said brightly, and this time, he met her eyes when she glanced at him. There was a tiny smirk on her face, and he couldn’t seem to arrange his features into an appropriate expression in return. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was up to, but she was obviously up to _something_.

“Oy, we have to think of a better name than ‘Weasley/Potter/Granger swimming club’, though,” Ron said with a grin.

Flicking a stray bit of bread crust at his brother, George said, “You get right to work on that, Ron.”

Ron flicked the crust right back and retorted, “I will.” There was a companionable silence for a minute, before Ron asked, “Remember those raspberry bushes that used to around here somewhere? Where were those?”

George pointed to the other side of the burn. “Over there, quarter of a mile? Probably a little less.”

Getting to his feet and stretching, Ron said, “Think I’ll get some.” He threw a look over his shoulder to Hermione, who smiled and wordlessly got up to join him. 

For a few minutes, George, Angelina, Ginny, and Harry sat there, lazily chatting, until Ginny said, “Want to go for a walk, Harry?” As the two of them of them left together, George resisted the urge to remind Harry that he may have been The Boy Who Lived, but Ginny was still his little sister.

And then, suddenly, George and Angelina found themselves alone, sitting on the sun-warmed rock and letting their legs hang in the cool water. Angelina leant forward and scooped up a handful, letting it run through her fingers onto her knees. “You Weasleys had quite the idyllic childhood.”

“Idyllic?” George snorted. “If you call hand-me-down clothes and used textbooks idyllic, then yeah.”

She leaned back, bracing herself with her hands. He had to twist slightly to keep looking at her. “C’mon, George. Look at this. It’s beautiful. It’s perfect. And your garden was my childhood dream.”

“Your childhood dreams were gnome-infested?” George asked, raising an eyebrow.

She ducked forward to splash water at him, and he put a hand up to his face to shield himself, laughing. “No, you prat,” she replied with a grin, “though I would’ve loved having gnomes in the garden. _Our_ garden was practically nonexistent.”

It was true; he couldn’t complain over much about his childhood. Though he’d stop short of calling it ‘idyllic’. “Well, you’re welcome in the garden anytime. You can come in the house as well, if you want.”

“That’s welcoming of you,” she snorted.

He just grinned in response and the two of them lapsed into a comfortable silence for a minute. Then his eye was drawn back to the scar on her back. Something about the moment—the sun, the easy conversation, the perfect warmth of the day—made him reach out and put a finger lightly to it. “What’s this?” he asked.

Somewhat to his surprise, she didn’t flinch at all when he touched her. “Spell damage,” she replied nonchalantly. “Laid me out a couple weeks after the Battle, actually. Landed me in St Mungo’s.”

George stared at her. “How come I’ve never heard of this?”

She gave him a thoughtful look, as though measuring her words, and then replied, “I didn’t want sympathy from you when I didn’t think you’d any to give. No, that sounds unfair.” Shaking her head, she tried again, “You didn’t need the distraction of me. The Healers said right away I’d be fine, anyway, it was just lying about for a week.”

“Just lying about for a week,” he repeated. “In St Mungo’s. What was it, anyway?”

With a shrug, she said, “I dunno, something eating away at my insides; that sounds about right for dark magic, doesn’t it? They fixed it, and I worked blood, sweat and tears to get back to Quidditch condition.”

George couldn’t help but keep staring at her—and not just because of the way the sun was glinting off her skin. “You’re an amazing woman, you know that?”

Angelina snorted. “Hardly. We’ve all got scars.” Then, perhaps sensing herself veering into territory too serious for a sunny, summer day, she said, “Anyway, it was a misstep unbefitting of a professional Chaser.”

Though he wanted to hear more about this spell damage and wanted to assure her that he’d have wanted to know at the time—despite the fact that she’d been right, absolutely, that he hadn’t had any sympathy to spare anyone else because he was wallowing in far too much self-pity—he dropped the subject, since it was obviously what she wanted to do. “Please, Ange.” George shot her a sly smile. “If you were a Seeker, I could understand that, but your reflexes aren’t _that_ quick—” 

But any further mickey-taking was cut off as, with a determined glint in her eyes, she launched herself at him and pulled him into the water. They hit it with a huge splash, due mostly to his flailing limbs, and plunged below the surface. He sucked in a mouthful of water and kept his eyes open to try to catch Angelina’s legs to pull her down, but she quickly kicked away from him before he could grab her. After a moment, he broke the surface of the water and spat out what was in his mouth.

Angelina was treading water, her hair plastered to her head and a wide grin on her face. “How’s that for reflexes?” she asked.

“Not bad,” he said innocently, trying to edge closer to her. She watched him beadily and kept her distance, but then his foot found a slightly larger rock on the bottom and he gripped it as best he could. “Certainly better than an out-of-practice shopkeeper––”

With that, he used his foothold to launch himself at her. She yelled in surprise, but her yell turned into a gurgle as he tackled her and pulled her underwater. In the clear, water-dappled light of the burn, he didn’t try to hold her under the surface, instead letting his arms loop gently around her while her hair floated up around her face and her eyes flashed at him in outrage that dimmed to amusement. 

For several seconds they drifted there, their feet gently brushing the pebbles at the bottom, and George realised with a jolt that he was holding a woman in his arms whom he was very attracted to, and when had that happened—of course he’d noticed she was fit when he’d seen her in her bikini; he was male, wasn’t he, and had eyes; but he was startled, and shaken, by the fact that suddenly all he wanted to do was keep his hands on her, when what he really needed to do was to let go of her, which would, yes, require him to disregard how soft and practically liquid her skin felt underneath his palms and against his arms.

When they broke the surface, George shook the water out of his eyes and was then promptly hit in the forehead by a squirt of water that, upon inspection, had come from Angelina’s mouth. “That’s for trying to drown me,” she remarked, grinning a little crookedly at him.

He reached up a hand and wiped the lingering water out of his eyes. “Yeah, but the attempted drowning was for pushing me in in the first place. If you’re counting, that makes you ahead.”

“A gentleman would consider that even.”

George looked around exaggeratedly. “D’you see one of those here?”

She laughed; a rich, full-throated sound that he suddenly realised he loved. It wasn’t just that he loved making people laugh; loved making _her_ , specifically, laugh, but he loved the sound of her laugh itself. It was like music. It was—it was _different_ than how he’d always loved making her laugh when they were at school. That had been all about him, him and Fred, and being the centre of attention, the life of the party. This was exactly the opposite; this was about Angelina, and making her happy, seeing her smile. His stomach twisted strangely.

“C’mon, Weasley,” she said, splashing a little more water towards him, which he returned in kind. “Didn’t I see some of your mum’s cake in that basket? If we eat it now, we can have as much as we like before the others come back.”

George chuckled at the mischievous look on her face. “I like your thinking, Johnson.”

Maybe they should be on a surnames only basis. Put a little distance between them—his stomach was still doing that weird twisting thing as they climbed back out of the water and sat next to each other, drying off until he wasn’t sure if the heat he could feel was just the sun, or her next to him, and not wanting to move to find out.


	7. Chapter 7

It was with a mingled sense of disappointment and relief that, some time later, George heard Ron and Hermione’s approaching voices, Hermione’s laugh carrying on the light breeze before he could see either of them.

“—can’t believe you,” Hermione was saying, as she stifled giggles.

“C’mon, what do you expect? You know how Seamus is!” Ron answered, just as both of them pushed aside a leafy branch and came into view. Ron’s and Hermione’s hands were both stained red with raspberries, and George hid a smile as he couldn’t help noting that there were red stains elsewhere on their bodies. Looked like the two of them had got up to more than just raspberry picking. Couldn’t blame them, really—all those years of acting like great prats and not seeing what everyone else already had done, which was that they’d fallen for each other long ago.

“Have you two been swimming again?” Hermione asked, taking in, no doubt, the amount of water that they'd managed to splash about.

“Yeah,” Angelina said, her tone casual. Well, of course she’d be casual; that was all that had happened. They’d been swimming again. Obviously the thoughts that had been running through his head hadn’t been running through hers, which was exactly as it should be. Totally expected. George’s own thoughts had been the product of a momentary lapse, and they…well, maybe he shouldn’t promise himself they’d never happen again.

Ginny and Harry returned shortly later, and by unspoken agreement, they began clearing up everything they’d brought and packing it away.

“You’re staying for dinner, aren’t you, Angelina?” Ron asked as he popped a scotch egg into his mouth. “I think Percy and Audrey are coming, so our mum’s cooking loads.”

Glancing at George, Angelina remarked, “I didn’t realise I was invited.”

Ginny snorted with laughter. “I knew George would forget to tell you.”

“Ah, right,” George said, quickly pulling his shirt on. “Ange, want to stay for dinner? You can meet Audrey; Percy’s marrying her in November.”

George didn’t envy Angelina’s position at the minute—even if she didn’t want to stay, not many people would be able to face three Weasleys, plus Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, and not accept the invitation. But he thought he saw a glimmer of pleasure in her eyes as she replied, “I’d love to, actually. It was going to be beans on toast for me tonight; I’d love a real dinner.”

“Good,” Hermione said. “You’ll like Audrey.”

“Yeah, she’s not at all the type of woman you’d expect Percy to marry,” Ginny said, completely fairly, as far as George was concerned, but Hermione looked slightly disapproving.

The sunlight was golden as they walked back to the Burrow, the high, bright light of the July afternoon giving way to that oblique angled summer light that was somewhere between afternoon and dusk. Soon, the house came into view, smoke rising gently from the chimney, and it looked almost out of time; the same way it had done for a million first views like this, and the same way it would for millions more. It was a comforting place, though for a second George remembered when it hadn’t been, when every one of his old haunts had just held the unbearable ghost of Fred. That day—that blur of days, actually, that had been the second and third of May—he hadn’t wanted to be at the Burrow, hadn’t wanted to be at the flat, hadn’t been able to think of anywhere that he _could_ stand to be because he’d never been anywhere by himself.

When they reached the garden, everyone else trouped into the house, talking and laughing, but Angelina suddenly wasn’t at George’s side. He looked back to see her hesitating just outside the circle of wellies that still surrounded the door, despite the fact that it was only Mum and Dad still living in the Burrow. He glanced over his shoulder at the disappearing ginger heads of his siblings, then stuck his hands in his pockets and went to stand beside Angelina. “You all right?” he asked.

She drew a deep breath and looked at him, smiling wryly. “Yeah. Just—walking into a big Weasley dinner with most of your family, it’s—you know.”

“Yeah.” He did. “Walking back into our flat for the first time—I mean, after it became just my flat—was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Barely made it through the door, I did.” He’d never told anyone this, but it didn’t seem odd or pathetic telling her. “I must’ve walked up and down the stairs at least twenty times before I finally worked up the nerve to just open the door.”

Wordlessly, she reached out and took his hand, twining her fingers with his. “This is—it’s daft, but…I avoided getting close to any of your family because the idea of coming here was something I thought I couldn’t handle,” she admitted. “It wasn’t just Fred, it was…I dunno, your whole family; this wonderful house, I suppose I imagined it…sucked dry of all its happiness. And now that I’m here that doesn’t even seem possible and I’m wondering why I ever thought it.”

“So does that mean you’re going to come in?” George asked her, smiling slightly. The feeling of her hand in his was nice. He knew he was going to have to let go of it imminently and wasn’t looking forward to that moment.

She returned the smile, squeezed his hand, and said, “Yeah, I think I am.”

They stepped through the door together but let go of each other’s hands at the same time. Ginny had already been put to work in the kitchen and George caught sight of Ron laying the table, half-magically and half-not, which two years ago George would’ve thought was only Ron’s questionable ability to concentrate but was a bit less concerning now.

“Angelina!” Mum suddenly appeared from the other room, looking happy in a way that was, luckily, becoming more and more common.

“Hi, Mrs Weasley,” Angelina said, sounding vaguely anxious.

Mum immediately hugged Angelina and said, “It’s so nice to see you, dear! George said you might be staying.”

Angelina returned the hug and relaxed visibly. “Thanks for having me, and it’s really great to see you again. Can I do anything to help?”

“Oh, of course not. Why don’t you join Hermione and Harry in the living room?” When Angelina nodded and started in that direction, George followed her, only to be halted by his mother’s palm at the end of her outstretched arm, suddenly barring his way. “Not you. I haven’t started the parsnips yet.”

“Right,” George sighed.

Angelina shot a grin at him and ducked through the door into the living room, where he could hear her confirming to Harry, Hermione, and Ron that he’d been enlisted to help cook. Mum steered him towards the obscenely large pile of parsnips and then bustled off to another room, leaving him and Ginny, who rolled her eyes good-naturedly at him, in the kitchen.

“I guess it’s at least a vote of confidence in our cooking abilities,” Ginny said. “Ron normally gets stuck laying the table, ever notice?”

With a laugh, George pointed out, “She’s trusting _you_ to cook, I’m just peeling.”

“Technically I’m just stirring,” Ginny said, smiling. “And I think she’s just got me doing this because she saw that Harry’s arm was around me when I was only wearing my bikini top.”

“I’d been pointedly ignoring that,” George said, prompting a giggle from his sister.

Suddenly, Angelina strolled back into the kitchen. “Something I can do, Ginny? I don’t feel right just sitting round while the two of you are slaving away over the oven.” She added this last bit with a crooked smile.

Ginny pulled out her wand, enchanted the spoon to keep stirring the pot that Mum had put her to work at, and said, “No,” she said, “but I’ve got to run upstairs for a second, so if you wouldn’t mind…um, making sure this keeps stirring?”

As she slipped out of the room, George shot her a narrow-eyed look. There was an innocent cast to her eyes, but he didn’t miss the way her gaze flicked between Angelina and him as she disappeared around the corner. Angelina came to his side and looked at the pile of parsnips. “Seriously, let me help. You don’t seem to be making much progress,” she observed, noting that he’d only magically been able to peel one parsnip, and that it had been mangled almost beyond recognition by the effort.

“Be my guest,” he said, watching as she pulled out her wand and muttered an incantation.

Nothing happened. 

“I can never get vegetables to peel for me,” she said in frustration, swishing her wand more and more exaggeratedly the longer the parsnips sat unmoving on the counter. “You’d think, with some of the magic I’ve learnt, that I’d be able to peel a tuber.”

“I wager you can open tins from the other room though, yeah?” George asked.

“You know, that may be why I eat beans on toast so often.”

George laughed. “Well, here.” With a wave of his wand, he Summoned two peelers and handed one to her, their fingers brushing as he did so. “I’m obviously rubbish at it as well.”

She gave him a smile laced with gratitude and they set to work peeling the mound of parsnips. He couldn’t help himself from glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. Something about watching Angelina’s hair dry, seeing how her curls become progressively tighter as it did so, made him notice again how beautiful she was. There was a funny ache in his chest as he thought it, like somehow the fact that she was standing in his parents’ kitchen, parsnip peelings stuck to her wrist, and that she was still gorgeous should hurt him somehow. Unbidden came the overwrought thought that her hair framed her face like the halos of angels on medieval stained glass windows. She raised a hand to it, seemingly unconsciously, and when she realised it had dried, she started to pull it back to tie it into a loose knot.

“It looks nice,” George said before he could stop himself. She looked at him sharply and he tried to stop the flush that he knew was rising in his face. Fat chance; no Weasley boy had ever been able to stop himself turning red. “I mean, it looks good, you know, natural like that.”

She blinked. “Thank you. That’s sweet. I wouldn’t think you’d’ve noticed.” She was suddenly watching him carefully, like he was a particularly unpredictable wild animal. “Thought that was part of being one of the boys.”

He needed to not compare her, in any way, to an angel. “Well, we don’t expect you to do your hair like ours,” he said, smiling easily, belying the weird hammer that his heart gave. One of the boys, right. Angelina, his mate, not an angelic vision of womanhood. He couldn’t think about her the way he’d done earlier, when they’d been swimming. She was his friend, nothing more. There was no wanting more from the girl who’d been ready to marry his brother.

But then she flashed a smile at him, and he wanted more. God help him, he wanted so much more.

And then Mum reappeared, and George didn’t know if he was grateful or disappointed. “Where’s Ginny?” Mum asked and then said, “Angelina, you really don’t have to do that.”

“She’ll be right back,” Angelina said. “And I don’t mind, Mrs Weasley; I’d like to help.”

Mum opened her mouth to respond, but then she closed it, her eyes on something that baffled George until he realised it was the space between him and Angelina, or rather, the lack of it. Their shoulders were practically touching; he actually could feel her body heat. His first instinct was to move away, but he didn’t, because—well, because there _wasn’t_ anything between him and Angelina; this wasn’t like the relationship with Parvati that he’d wanted to hide to avoid awkward questions.

“That’s very good of you, dear,” Mum said. Then, shaking her head, she added, “It’s just a pity George never bothered to listen to his mother when I tried to teach him how to run a kitchen!” She punctuated the last word by good-naturedly tapping him on the head with her wand, which had an added benefit of Summoning another peeler to magically begin peeling the parsnips, at a rate, it had to be said, that was far more efficient than his and Angelina’s efforts combined.

“To be fair, Mum, none of us has a clue what we’re doing in the kitchen.” He grinned. “But at least that means we have to come by all the time for a decent home-cooked meal, right?”

Mum just shook her head, but she was smiling. “If you’re sure you don’t mind helping, Angelina, then I’ll just make sure the table’s laid properly.”

“I don’t mind at all, honestly,” Angelina assured her.

With another smile, Mum bustled out of the kitchen. For a second, the two of them peeled in silence, continuing to be outdone by the magicked peeler.

“Really makes a bloke feel inadequate,” George said, nodding to it.

Angelina snorted. “Tell me about it.”

They shared a glance, both of them grinning. Then, taking a chance, George asked, “So—what happened with what’s-his-name?” He realised that he had not, in fact, ever known Angelina’s current beau’s name, and the fierceness with which he hoped he never found out startled him a little. “Did you break it off?” He only hoped that this came off as casual as it sounded in his head. Cool, suave, totally-not-asking-for-any-personal-reasons. Just a friendly question.

“Oh, that.” Angelina concentrated on digging a brown spot out of her parsnip. “Yeah, that’s finished. No great loss.” Her eyes flickered upwards, but he couldn’t tell if she’d looked at him or not. “Think I might swear off dating for awhile.”

It was a stupid thing to make his heart soar, but George still had a moment’s difficulty wiping the irrepressible smile off his face at this news. “Yeah?” he said. “Well, I reckon after spending so much time with me, other men just aren’t up to scratch.”

“That’s right, Weasley,” she said with a smirk.

He’d made a similar joke once at Hogwarts, on a day that the two of them had found themselves walking to Charms side by side. Fred had forgotten…something; George could no longer remember what it was. A textbook? Homework? They’d frequently gone to their classes without both, especially seventh year, but maybe Fred had decided to make an effort for Flitwick that day, who had always been their favourite teacher. But George had found himself alone with Angelina in any case, and they walked half the length of a corridor in stony silence—well, stony on her part, as they’d recently been banned from Quidditch for life and she hadn’t shown herself to be in a particularly forgiving mood. George had thought of his silence as rather more like self-preservation.

She’d surprised him, though, and looked at him as they walked, asking, “Did you get the essay finished, then?”

“Yeah, despite the fact that it was time taken away from more productive pursuits.”

“Hmph.”

Alicia had been down the corridor, walking in front of them. Easily within shouting distance. He’d assumed, based on recent history, that Angelina would far rather have walked to class with her, and said so, but she’d just glared at him and said, “I’ll walk with who I want.”

He’d grinned at her. “I s’pose no point bothering with others’ company, not when you’re accustomed to the Weasley twins.”

Despite herself, she’d cracked a smile; just a flash of a grin that flickered across her face lightning fast before it was gone.

He was so lost in the memory that he didn’t realise they’d finished peeling the parsnips (at least, the peeler had finished; its pile was teetering three times as high as either George’s or Angelina’s). She set her peeler down and leaned against the table, watching him. “It just seems like a waste of time. I can’t remember the last time I actually _liked_ one of them for more than a date or two.” A shadow crossed her face, and she mumbled, “Suppose I can, actually.”

For one insane second, he almost took her hand. Then, his mum bustled back into the kitchen, Ginny in tow. “Ah, thank you, George dear, and you, Angelina.”

“Happy to do it, Mum,” George said, stretching.

“Yeah, no trouble, Mrs Weasley,” Angelina added.

Winking at his sister, George said, “Enjoy mashing parsnips, Gin.” 

She smirked back at him, and George and Angelina joined the rest of his family in the sitting room. Before long, dinner had appeared on the table—a huge roast with gravy and tureens full of buttered peas, sprouts, and mashed parsnips. They all sat down to eat, the table extending to fit everyone. The dinner table was loud, conversations rising and falling, punctuated by the rattle of silverware and plates. Loud and happy, and for a minute or two, George just let it wash over him. Angelina was animatedly talking to Ron, Harry, and Dad about the Ballycastle Bats (“Yeah, but you’re doing _really well_ , this year, the Bats’ve got a shot at winning the League!” Ron exclaimed), and Ginny, Percy, and Audrey were deep in conversation. George looked to Mum and saw that she, too, was silent and watching. There was a small, happy smile on her face as she surveyed all of them—a look that he suspected was unwittingly echoed on his own face.

After dinner, they decamped to the sitting room, Dad to his favorite sagging armchair and the rest of them scattered around the room on whatever seating was available. Except Mum, of course, whose instinct was always to clear up after the lot of them, and who had disappeared into the kitchen just as the rest of the family was settling in. After a second’s consideration, George followed her into the kitchen and wordlessly took over the washing from her.

“Oh—Georgie, you don’t have to do that.”

_Georgie_. She only called him that when she was overwhelmed by some emotion or another. Not anger, at least, usually. That was a plus. He just didn’t want her to start crying, not when it had been a really good night. A really good night after a really good day. “I know,” he told her. “But, you know. You did it for all of us for how many years? And you're still doing it. Figure I can help out now and again.”

“I suppose that means I raised you well,” she said.

“Not that I’d want anyone else to hear you say it, but yeah, I reckon it does.”

The two of them worked silently for a moment, George concentrating on levitating a cauldron back onto the hook it normally hung from on the ceiling, and then, in a light, too-casual tone, Mum said, “It’s nice you brought Angelina around tonight.”

With a shrug, George said, “Old friends, aren’t we?”

She waved her wand over the sink, and a parade of plates rose out of it to go settle themselves in the dish rack. There was a hesitation in her tone as she said, “Well, yes. But I thought…didn’t Fred…?”

Something icy slipped between his spine and his stomach. “Yeah,” he replied. He hadn’t meant it to come out as sounding anything but normal, but Mum looked at him, her brow furrowed. Her mouth opened, as though she wanted to ask him what was wrong, but then she closed it. It was probably obvious to her, too, that this had suddenly become a subject not to be broached.

To cover the moment, he smiled at her. “I can finish all this, Mum. You should have a rest for once.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She paused, then reached up to put a hand to his hair for just a second. “Go back to the sitting room and be with your friends. It's good to see you enjoying yourself.”

He ducked his head in tacit acknowledgement of this point—he obviously wasn’t going to admit it out loud, not to his mother—and left the kitchen to rejoin everyone else. Someone had got a bottle of mead and his family was sharing a nightcap. There was an untouched glass—for him, he assumed—on the end table next to Angelina. She was chatting easily with Hermione, a bright smile on her face. Ron was next to Hermione, holding her hand and looking content just to listen to her talk, if the stupid look on his face was anything to go by.

It was, he realised with a jolt, exactly what he wanted. His family and soon-to-be-family, happy and safe and laughing, and him part of it instead of outside of it, that drink waiting for him to come back and rejoin the party. Ron and Hermione, Ginny and Harry, Percy and Audrey, and then—him. He’d felt it again tonight, how it would be to be with someone, someone who he wanted to bring round his parents’ house, who he wanted to let into every part of his life. But Angelina wasn’t that woman. She couldn’t be.

That icy sensation knifed through his abdomen again, and he suddenly didn’t want to be tempted by that feeling anymore. If he perched on the arm of the chair that Angelina was sitting on and drank that mead that was waiting for him, it would feel… _right_. Except it wasn’t.

Instead, he cleared his throat. It might not have been right, but he still didn’t want to let go of this day. “Want to go on a walk, Ange?” he asked.

Angelina looked up from her conversation with Hermione and George noticed the latter’s brow furrow thoughtfully for just a second.

“Sure,” she replied, shooting him a smile. She quickly drained what was left of her mead and picked his up. “Do you want this?”

“Nah, give it to Dad—Mum’s sure to come out here and put Celestina Warbeck on in a second.” Everyone laughed, including Dad, but that didn’t stop him from flicking his wand and Summoning the mead to his own hand.

As Angelina got to her feet, Hermione said something to her too low for George to hear, but whatever it was made Angelina laugh brightly.

The two of them stepped into the quiet, warm night and set off through the garden into the orchard, up towards the paddock on top of the hill. “You and Hermione are getting on,” George remarked.

“I always liked Hermione,” Angelina replied. “She’s by far the most sensible person I know.”

“Which I’ve always felt is the main reason Ron and her should marry—the Weasleys need _one_ sensible person in the family.”

“True,” she said with a sly grin. “The rest of you definitely don’t fit the bill.”

He laughed, and the two of them walked through the night in silence for a minute. It was still warm, and the quiet darkness was stirred only by a slight breeze. George could hear it rustling through the leaves of the trees in the nearby orchard. It sounded like the whispers of people just beyond the range of hearing.

Unexpectedly, Angelina asked, “When are you going to open a branch of Wheezes in Hogsmeade, anyway?”

George glanced at her. “As far as I know, our fine products are still banned at Hogwarts.”

With a snort, she said, “As though that ever stopped you. I thought you meant to open it _years_ ago? I don’t blame you waiting a bit after the War, but George, it’s been over two years now. What are you waiting for?”

“A sign from God,” he said flippantly. “Why the sudden interest?”

Shrugging, she said, “I don’t know. I guess I was just thinking, sitting with your family—well, it’d be a real shame for there to be no joke shop in Hogsmeade once all their kids are at Hogwarts.”

“Oy, I’ve not given permission for Ginny to have kids. Harry’s only got permission to chastely court her.”

Angelina snorted. “That’s misguided of you.”

“In a sweet, brotherly, sort of way, though,” George said.

“No. Just misguided.”

He shrugged. “Well, a bloke has to try.” Thinking of something, he said curiously, “You haven’t got any siblings, have you?”

Shaking her head, she replied, “No. I think that’s why I’ve always liked your family so much.”

“And here I was thinking it’s just because we’re all so charming.”

“That too, of course,” Angelina said solicitously, making George chuckle.

Just then, they found themselves cresting the hill, bringing the village into view. They both stood there for a moment, gazing at it, the windows of the houses jewel bright in the darkness. The sounds of Muggle television shows and music drifted out of open windows and were carried on the breeze up to where the two of them stood. _Never been here before; I'm intrigued, I'm unsure; I’m searching for more…_ came the strains of a tinny radio on the night air.

On some unspoken signal, the two of them sat down in the grass. George laid back, his hands behind his head, and stared up at the sky, where the lights from the village weren’t enough to dim the stars’ cool, white glow. After a few moments, Angelina followed suit and laid next to him. For several companionable minutes, the two of them just laid there stargazing.

Finally, Angelina spoke. “This is what Fred and I did the last time I saw him,” she said without turning her head. There was no brokenness in her voice, just the voicing of her old grief. _Their_ old grief. “For ages I couldn’t look at stars. It’s why I stayed in London.”

George glanced at her. “Never knew you wanted to leave.”

She laughed quietly, turning her head and meeting his gaze. “Yeah. I always wanted to live in the country. A place like the Burrow, that’s what I wanted. I was going to find it once the War was over.” She paused, and then, in a quieter tone, went on, “But I hated seeing the stars. They were beautiful and I couldn’t stand it.” She jerked her head in what George took to be an approximation of a shrug. “Anyway, it didn’t seem so important to have a place to start a family, after that.”

Propping himself up on an elbow, George remarked, “I never knew that about you.”

“Which?” There was a twitch of a smirk on her face. “My pastoral romanticism or my astrophobia?”

“Well, both,” he admitted. “But I meant this hitherto unknown love for the country.”

She smiled up at him. Their faces were closer than he thought they’d be in this position, and the way the starlight gave her eyes just a hint of a gleam made his stomach flip. “You’d never think it, would you? I dunno, it just appealed to me. Like I said, I barely had a garden growing up. My dad worked in the City, though, so it didn’t make sense living anywhere but London.” Then, her smile faded. “Fred and I argued about it.”

“You and Fred argued about everything.” As soon as he’d said it, he wondered if he shouldn’t have, true as it might have been.

Luckily, she just laughed, a startled burst of sound, like he’d surprised her into it. “I know we did. But this was a real argument. Fred and I had a lot of stupid ones.” George wondered if she was going to go on. It was a little odd hearing about his brother in this context, but he didn’t mind. As though the thought had occurred to her at the same time, she put a hand to her forehead briefly and said, “I’m sorry, I’m being an idiot. You don’t want to hear this.”

“No, it’s fine,” George assured her, suspecting that what was important here was her need to say it and be listened to. And it seemed very important, suddenly, for Angelina to know that she could say anything to him, no matter what it was.

He settled down onto his back again but kept his head turned towards her. For a moment, she scrutinised him, appearing to search his face for the lie in his words. But she wouldn’t find it. He’d maybe never been so sincere about anything in his life, and the feeling startled him.

“Fred didn’t want to leave London,” she finally went on. “He loved it there. I think he thought…I dunno, it was like, because he—you—grew up…er…not that well-off—”

“Poor is the word you’re looking for,” he informed her, grinning slightly. “It’s all right, I know.”

His interjection didn’t fluster her. “Poor, then, if you like—it was like he thought he’d be going back to that, living outside London. Anyway,” she added, looking away from him at last, “I’m not sure he ever really imagined not living in the same flat as you.”

“You fought about that as well?” George guessed shrewdly. Her silence was answer enough, and he didn’t address it, sensing that she felt some sort of misplaced guilt. Trying to come between the two of them and all that, and then Fred going and dying. “I don’t blame you,” he said. “Who’d want to live with the two of us?”

She smiled sadly but didn’t respond right away, gazing, instead, at the stars that she’d once hated looking at. “I miss him,” she admitted softly. “But somehow…George, I’ve been meaning to tell you, somehow you make things so much better.” Then, before he had a chance to do anything, she turned her head to look at him fiercely, “And it’s not because you’re just like him or something, like you’re a stand-in, so I don’t want you thinking that.”

“I wasn’t,” he said truthfully. Maybe he’d have got there eventually, but her earnestness didn’t allow for that now. “Anyway, if you were expecting me to be just like Fred, I imagine I’ve been a bit of a let-down. Missing ear, missing twin, and all that. Fred never had to do without either.”

Angelina put her fingers gently to the left side of his head, in the spot where his ear had once been. “You were never just like him.”

He paused for a moment while they held each other’s gazes. “You noticed.” He wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement.

“Of course I did.” She pressed her lips together and laid back down, looking up at the sky. He could see starlight reflecting in her eyes again. How had it taken him so long to realise how beautiful her eyes were?

He looked away from her and upwards. Leo was visible high overhead, glowing softly. “I always wanted to live in the country, too,” he said. She glanced at him and he returned the glance out of the corner of his eyes. It was enough to see her smile.


	8. Chapter 8

A week on from the picnic, George had just about convinced himself that what he’d been feeling so acutely that day had been a combination of high spirits and sun stroke. Ron didn’t mention anything seeming…out of the ordinary; just a comment about how it’d been good to have Angelina round, and that she was loads less intimidating when she wasn’t on the Quidditch pitch.

“I never said anything,” he remarked as they were stocking the newest shipment of Decoy Detonators ( _Now smaller and even easier to sneak into that detention that’s cutting into your hard-earned leisure time!_ ), “but she really scared me when she was our Quidditch Captain. She always looked like one push would’ve sent her off the deep end, you know?”

George winced. “You’re telling me, little bro. Try being the one that got chucked off the team.”

“She wasn’t mad at Harry.”

“Yeah, well, Harry wasn’t us. She didn’t have a thing with Harry.”

“She didn’t have a thing with you either,” Ron pointed out.

With a shrug, George said, “Guilt by association.”

If there was going to be a time for Ron to say, “By the way, _is_ there a thing with you and Angelina now?” then this would have been the opening. But Ron just laughed and cut open another box of Detonators with a flick of his wand, and George told himself that the answer to this imagined question was a resounding _no_.

Certainly nothing had changed between him and Angelina; lunch with her that week was as normal as ever. Except, if he was honest with himself, _really_ honest, he knew that things _had_ changed. Just because he could hide it—and he was, actually, quite practised at hiding things when he needed to be, otherwise he’d have spent far more time in detention at school than he had—didn’t, in fact, mean that what he’d felt had disappeared.

He was determined to pretend that it had, though. Maybe if he pretended long enough, the subterfuge would become reality.

Angelina nibbled at a chip from his plate, having finished hers already. “Excuse me,” he said in mock outrage.

With a crooked smile, she said, “I’m still hungry.”

“Then you shouldn’t have ordered a small portion of chips, should you?” He didn’t make any move to stop her, though, as she fished another from in front of him.

“I’m watching my weight,” she said primly. “Or at least,” she added with a flash of a grin, “paying lip service to watching my weight.”

They were sitting in a dark pub in Leicester Square, the sort of place, Angelina insisted, that Muggle tourists would stop in just to say they’d been there. George didn’t know what the attraction was, personally, aside, of course, from the fact that it was dry and warm inside, as opposed to the cold rain dripping down outside. “We used to come and eat here when I was young,” Angelina said. “Before Hogwarts, I mean. One day a year, my dad would get tickets to a show and we’d have a day in central London.”

“I wager not much has changed in here since then,” he said, looking around. It may have been Muggle, but he’d spent enough time out in Muggle London to recognise dated decor when he saw it.

With a laugh, she said, “No. Not really.” Settling back in her chair, she said, “I haven’t told you yet—Alicia’s asked me to be her maid-of-honour at the wedding.”

“I thought that was a foregone conclusion,” he said. “So what does that mean for you, then? Are you the one arranging the hen party? You know, thinking of it, that might be an untapped Wheezes market…”

“I’m not sure the world’s ready for a Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes hen party line,” she said with a snort.

He looked thoughtfully into the distance, drumming his fingers on the table. “We could do some sort of inflatable, you know, have it expand to a certain size and announce that’s its prediction of the bloke’s—”

“You just stop right there, George Weasley,” Angelina said sternly, though he could tell, as he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, that she was fighting back a guffaw. “I don’t want, now or at any time in the future, to be subjected to predictions about Oliver’s…er…measurements.”

George snorted into his beer, then, solicitously, said, “Well, I wouldn’t want to offend your delicate sensibilities, Ange.”

“Good of you. And,” she went on, trying to regain some dignity, “to answer your question, I don’t really know. What did Fleur do before the wedding?”

“Honestly, I think everyone was more concerned about everyone making it to the wedding itself in one piece.”

Her face stilled. “Oh—of course, George, I’m sorry, I—”

His heart lurched as he realised his comment had sounded like an admonition, when all he’d meant it as was dark humour. He reached across the table and touched her arm, saying, “Ange—sorry. That’s not how I meant it.”

Her eyes flicked down to his hand resting on her arm and he hastily removed it. “I know it isn’t,” she said. “I just—it was still thoughtless.”

He very much wanted to touch her again—his fingers were practically tingling where they’d rested on her skin—but he forced himself to stop thinking of it. Maybe if he pictured her as a Blast-Ended Skrewt…huh, not likely. Though, thinking of it, Angelina’s temper did, on occasion, resemble a Skrewt’s. “You know, I reckon that’s one good thing about hanging round me—I’m not the most sensitive bloke out there. I don’t think you really need to worry about standard-issue thoughtlessness. I’m not too likely to notice.”

With a snort, she said “Come off it, do you really think that?”

“You _don’t_?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I think you might be selling yourself a _bit_ short. Not,” she added, “that I think you’re writing sonnets in your spare time.”

Laughing, George replied, “You don’t mean you’ve never heard my classic, ‘Shall I compare thee to a Sunday I don’t have to work?’”

She choked on her beer and, her eyes watering a little, said, “Oh, that one’s yours, is it?”

The way her eyes flashed when she laughed, and the crinkle at their corners, made it difficult to recall that he’d resolved to not even think about things like the crinkle at the corner of her eyes when she laughed. But he couldn’t help it.

Angelina leaned back against the bench, a content look on her face. “I’m really excited for Alicia, you know. And Oliver, too,” she said fairly.

“How will that work, anyway? With her in the Department of Magical Games and Sports? There’s not some rule against her marrying Quidditch players?”

“I don’t think so,” Angelina replied. “Anyway, she hasn’t got much to do with the teams themselves, more the day-to-day running of the League. You know, marketing, filling vacancies, making sure the stadiums are up to code—that sort of thing.”

“Hm.” He popped a chip into his mouth. “Her job doesn’t seem as exciting as I’d initially imagined.”

“What, running a shop not glamorous enough for you?” she teased. “Thinking of a career in the Ministry? Maybe politics?”

“How dare you?” he asked, grimacing and putting a hand over his heart. Then, thoughtfully, he said, “Maybe I’ll drop in and see her.”

With another smile, Angelina said, “She’d like that.”

Too soon, they both had to leave, as the rest of their days were calling. George watched her go, her slender figure weaving between the crowd of Muggles, and he wished he had a reason to go after her.

And true to his word, he did find himself in the Ministry the following week, having dropped off a book he’d borrowed off of Percy (George had thought Perce might have been Confunded when he asked; it took him a full forty-five seconds to close his gaping mouth and answer). He took the lift to level seven and found someone who directed him to Alicia’s cube.

Her back was to him, her shoulders slouched as she pored over a heavily marked parchment. “So this is where you work,” George said, leaning against the cube wall.

Alicia jumped and whirled around in her chair, startled, and then her face broke into a smile. “George, what are you doing here?”

“I had to come round to drop something off,” he said. “Figured I should stop in and see you.”

“Oh, I’m so glad you came! Sit down, here—” She waved her wand and a chair dropped down next to her desk from midair, having appeared there moments before. There was a shout of surprise from the neighbouring cube and Alicia winced, then said sheepishly, “Sorry, David!”

“’S’okay,” a voice said with a grunt of pain.

George grinned at her. Alicia’s uncomplicated, unrelenting cheeriness had grated on him in the months immediately following Fred’s death. He’d just wanted to be left alone with his misery, and she never seemed capable of just allowing people to be sad. Now, he thought he understood that it was the way that she, herself, coped with her own sadness. He remembered the first time she’d come round the shop after the funeral. Fred’s hadn’t been the first they’d both been at, and it wouldn’t be the last, and those weeks had been so hard; so numbingly hard—sleepless nights and long, blurry days that bled together, and every few days a funeral that you had to go to, didn’t you, because they’d been your friend or classmate or your date to Hogsmeade once or of course, if you were one of the unlucky ones, your brother. And the grief, always the grief, there under the surface of everything he’d done, and if, for a second or thirty he’d forgotten how alone he was, it would come rushing back like a knife to the heart.

Then Alicia had come round, and he’d found her smiling presence to be intolerable. She hadn’t come in for anything in particular, and she’d just stood at the till talking to him—in those days, talking more _at_ him, as he’d usually been a reluctant participant in any conversation—until finally he’d snapped, “Did you need something?”

That had wiped the smile from her face. “Er, no,” she’d said. “I just came to see you.”

“Well, you've seen me,” he’d said, and he wasn’t sure if his tone had been as harsh in reality as it was in his memory.

Alicia had made a valiant attempt to smile again, but George had turned away from her and walked straight into the back, where she wouldn’t follow him.

It hadn’t been one of his finer moments.

George sat in the chair that had apparently been occupied moments ago by Alicia’s colleague. “I always thought if you had to work at the Ministry, the Department of Magical Games and Sports would be the only decent place to end up.” He glanced at the Quidditch posters plastering the cube walls, noting that Angelina’s small figure was zooming around the Ballycastle Bats poster.

“I love it here,” Alicia said. “I know it isn’t something that most people think is really important—not like Harry, in Auror training, or anything—but, you know, it makes people happy. Honestly after the War, that was the only thing I could think to do that seemed…I dunno, worthwhile.”

“Yeah,” George said. “I know the feeling. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy The Boy Who Lived’s out there looking after the rest of us, but people need to have fun, too.”

“‘The Boy Who Lived’,” Alicia snorted. “Do you call Harry that to his face?”

“Only if I’m feeling particularly sadistic.”

She laughed. “I think I’ll probably just stick to his first name next time I see him down in the canteen, then.”

A photo next to her in-tray caught George’s eye. In it, Alicia was beaming at the camera, her arms around Oliver. Oliver, meanwhile, was spending most of his time looking uncomfortable and staring at the camera—until he turned his head and caught Alicia’s eye, and then such a besotted look came over his face that he looked practically like a different person. “Blimey,” George said, nodding towards the photo, “I almost don’t recognise him. He looks so…happy and normal.”

“Oh, shut it,” Alicia said, and as she looked at the photo, her own face took on a remarkably similar expression to Oliver’s in the photo.

He grinned. “I’m only joking. I think it’s brilliant, honestly. Angelina reckons you’re the only one who can be a good influence on him.” When she pursed her lips, he laughed. “Honestly, I’m really happy for you. And I’m expecting that the wedding’s going to be quite the do.”

“Oh my gosh. George,” she said seriously, “when you get married, just elope. The planning is a nightmare. Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you—you don’t mind if I don’t seat you and your siblings all together at the wedding, do you?”

“Please don’t,” he said. “I see enough of them, don’t I?”

She smiled and shook her head at him, knowing full well he didn’t mean it. “I thought I’d put you, Angelina, Lee, and Katie at the same table, and then Harry, Ginny, Ron, and Hermione, and someone else from their year at school, but I’ve not decided who yet. Percy at another table, with the other boys—er, men—from his and Oliver’s year.” She planted an elbow on her desk and blew a stray piece of hair out of her face. “Working out the seating chart’s worse than Arithmancy.”

“Have you considered asking Vector for help?” George joked.

“Yes,” she said. “And that’s not even taking into account the rest of it—the venue and the decorating and the catering and—poor Oliver, he volunteered to do the consultation with the florist the other day, and—do you remember that funny little cactus thing Neville Longbottom had our seventh year? He was always taking care of it?—well, anyway, apparently they spray this really foul, mucky, pus stuff, and Oliver…well, he won’t say if he bumped into it or exactly what happened, but he came home just absolutely reeking. So I feel bad sending him back there!”

Leaning back in his chair, George asked, “Why don’t _you_ elope?”

She shrugged. “I can’t, not now. Plus my dad really wants the whole big thing—you know, give his daughter away the old-fashioned way.”

It had been the same when Bill and Fleur had got married—not that the two of them hadn’t _wanted_ the big wedding, but he’d always got the feeling that it was more for Mum and Dad, and Fleur’s parents, that it had got as big as it had. The wedding had been something nice, when there’d been so few nice things. George remembered what Fred had said, though—that he didn’t want any of it. Well, even then George had known it wasn’t that simple, and if Alicia and Oliver couldn’t stand up to their—considerably less intimidating, he was sure—parents, then what chance did any of the Weasleys have of standing up to Mum?

“Well, we all could use a few weddings, anyway.” He hesitated, then just said the words on his lips, since he knew they were both thinking them, “Too many funerals the last few years.”

Alicia sighed. “I know. I want it to be nice. I want everyone to have fun.”

“I thought that’s why you invited me?”

That made her expression lighten again. Then, unexpectedly, she said, “I’m really happy you’re spending so much time with Angelina.”

George raised his eyebrows. “You make it sound like it should be a chore for me.”

Alicia’s mouth dropped open in horror for a moment before she was able to amend, “No, Merlin, no, that isn’t what I meant. I’m happy she’s spending so much time with _you_ , too. I think the two of you are really good for each other.” There was a beady look in her eyes, like she was searching him for something. Why was it that most of his family and friends were fixing him with that same look, lately? Like they all knew something that he didn’t, and were trying to suss out if they should let him in on the secret.

“Yeah, well, I reckon Angelina and I were always pretty good for each other. At least, I stopped Fred carrying out some of our more—er—creative pranks on her.” Like one of the very earliest iterations of the Headless Hats—they’d started working on those by the end of their fifth year, and they’d discovered that those first hats had had a tendency not to Vanish the wearer’s head, but instead most of what they were wearing. Though sometimes it was an arm or a leg; they really hadn’t got the charm’s field parameters set well at all back then. Fred had been all for having Angelina try one on in the Common Room but George had nixed that idea and suggested the first Slytherin to annoy them on the Hogwarts Express back to London.

“I’m glad you think so,” Alicia said, with the air of someone who was gratified that their daft friend was finally seeing sense.

“Actually, I’m going to one of her matches in a couple weeks. Fancy coming along? Oliver too, if he’s not playing.”

She shook her head, but said, “Thanks, though. Our weekends are pretty well taken up by wedding planning.”

George glanced at his watch. “I suppose I should probably let you get back to work.”

Making a face, she replied, “I’d rather talk, but, yeah. We’ve got three referees retiring at the end of the season and I’m supposed to have the job requisitions all written up by the end of the week.”

Which sounded horrible. Not, of course, that he’d ever say that. But he was happy to have his shop to go back to—and after saying good-bye to Alicia, he made his way back out of the Ministry and Disapparated back to Diagon Alley.

 

* * *

 

Attending a Ballycastle Bats match alone didn’t feel the way George expected it to. He’d anticipated not feeling awkward, exactly, but feeling perhaps just on the edge of it. Quidditch was a social activity; you went with your friends and you cheered for your team together—well, in George’s case, you both went with your friends and you cheered for your friends. He’d got on well enough with his seatmates, a father and daughter up from Armagh for the day to see the match.

But then the match started, and he couldn’t do anything but raptly watch Angelina through his omniculars. Her speed and skill, her grace in the air, were hypnotising. She’d been good at Hogwarts—he’d always known that—but this was different. Even if his friends had been here with him, he’d probably have forgotten their presence. And it wasn’t just her play. It was the perfect arc her arm made as she threw the Quaffle, the way her hair streamed behind behind her as she flattened her body against her broom and streaked across the pitch; the fierce determination on her face as she wove and darted and scored.

After her first goal, she high-fived one of her fellow Chasers, and then looked straight down into the stands to where he was sitting. Her eyes went to him—he’d chalk it up to the hair—and he lowered his omniculars from his face. Even from a distance, though, her smile was luminous. He gave her a thumbs-up.

It was a short game. Ballycastle’s Chasers ran up the score quickly, and before fifteen more minutes had elapsed, their Seeker shot straight up into the air and grabbed the Snitch as it flitted across the pitch. George whooped and caught Angelina’s eye again‚ and she waved at him, her smile even more blindingly bright than before.

The girl next to him was staring at him in awe as he turned to leave his seat, and she asked, “Do you _know_ her?”

Too young for Hogwarts still, maybe never been to Diagon Alley—Angelina was the famous one between the two of them, and even though there wasn’t a ‘the two of them’, he found himself aching with pride at this wonderful, wonderful woman. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re old school friends.”

Something about this, for some reason, seemed to jog the father’s memory, and his eyes moved from George’s hair to his lack of ear, his mouth opening in a mixture of shock and a half-formed sentence. An apology, probably, for not realising who he was, but George cut it off and said, “Enjoy the rest of your day,” as, with a wave, he walked away. He found, suddenly, that he much preferred being Angelina’s old friend to being one of the heroes of the Battle of Hogwarts.

Angelina had told him, when she’d given him the ticket, to not even thinking about leaving without saying hello to her. Not that he would. Another realisation he’d had, lately, was that he'd take any excuse to spend time with her. So he showed the note to security that she’d written and they allowed him through, and he made his way to the changing room where he waited, leaning against the wall, for her to appear.

When she stepped out of the changing room, he pushed off from the wall and removed his hands from his pockets to punch her lightly on the shoulder. “Nice one, Johnson. Winning goal was yours; I was impressed despite myself.”

She tried, and failed, not to smile at him. “Well, I try, Weasley, I try.”

“Seriously, though, you’re amazing. Have I told you lately?”

Was it his imagination, or was color rising to her face? “I don’t think you’ve ever told me.”

“Well, that’s only because I’m a bloody idiot,” he said cheerfully.

Several of her teammates filed out of the changing room, looking at George with interest. “Johnson, is this the new bloke?” one of them asked.

Angelina definitely flushed this time. “No,” she replied quickly, keeping her gaze determinedly averted from George. He wasn’t sure if he should be offended at how fast she’d denied it. “No. This is George Weasley. George, Octavia Hughes, Mehreen Khan and Aodheen Smythe.”

“Congratulations on the win,” George said. He knew the roster well enough—Hughes was Keeper, Khan was one of the Beaters, and Smythe was one of Angelina’s fellow Chasers.

“Thanks,” Mehreen Khan said with a grin. “Reckon we’ve really got a shot at the Cup this year.”

“That means harder training,” Aodheen Smythe groaned good-naturedly. 

Khan made a face, then said, “Angelina, we’re for a night out; you in? Maebh’s, what do you say?”

“You’re invited, ginger,” Octavia Hughes said a little slyly.

Angelina looked at George and raised her eyebrows, but said to her teammates, “Maybe I’ll see you ladies there.”

“No ladies here,” Aodheen Smythe laughed before the three of them Disapparated with a crack.

For a second after they had gone, George and Angelina looked at each other. “Maebh’s?” he asked, one eyebrow cocked, a crooked smile on his face and his hands in his pockets.

“It’s a club. In magical Belfast. We’re—um—regulars, I suppose.” She shrugged and smiled. “Want to come?”

“Don’t feel you’ve got to follow through with that invitation,” he said. “The rejection stings, but eventually I’ll get over it.”

She shook her head at him. “I’m not asking again. Are you coming, Weasley?”

His crooked smile widened to a grin. “Absolutely. Wouldn’t miss it, Johnson.”

She held out a hand to him and he took it, following her as she Apparated out of the stadium and onto a narrow, brick-paved street, slick with recent rain. Most of the shop fronts were dark and gas lamps burnt at regular intervals. Few people were out, and nearly all those that were were coming or going from the brick building they were standing in front of. Pulsing bass was coming from inside. A sign with a witch leading a bull on it hung over the doorway.

A strange, almost wild feeling possessed George, and he said without thinking, “You know, I _could_ be your bloke; it’s not the _most_ implausible thing, is it?” His easy grin remained on his face to assure her that he was joking, even though something in him meant it sincerely. He didn’t even really want an answer to the question.

It was a second before Angelina dropped his hand, and another before she answered. “Not the _most_ implausible thing,” she replied. 

George wondered what the hint of the smile on her face meant but didn’t pursue it. Instead, he said, gesturing with a jerk of his head towards Maebh’s, “You’ll never see a place like this in Diagon Alley.”

“Yeah, well Diagon Alley’s pretty traditional, isn’t it? Not like magical Belfast at all.”

“Wouldn’t know,” George said, “I’ve never been here.”

She shot him a bright smile. “The night’s young, isn’t it?”

He laughed. “I suppose it is.”

When she pushed the door open, the pounding bass spilt out into the street. A dimly lit staircase led them downwards into a large room, lit by flashing coloured lights and filled with young witches and wizards. A crowded bar was at one end of the room, standing only, while a dance floor filled the rest of the space. They paused for a moment on a landing to survey the room. Whatever the bar was serving was nothing the Leaky Cauldron had—most of the drinks sparkled, flashed, or popped in some way, some of them even leaping from glass to glass and back again.

They continued down the stairs and headed towards the bar, where Angelina slipped through the crowd and pressed up to the bar, greeting the barman by name, “Gary, did you save any Swott’s for me?”

The barman grinned and a glass came shooting out of the cabinet, slamming itself down in front of her. “Sure I have for you, Johnson.” A bottle appeared in his hand and he poured her a shot. “What about your friend, then?” he asked, nodding towards George.

George had been watching the jumping drinks. “What do you call those?” he asked, intrigued.

“Ah, a Fizzing Fountain? You’ll need two of them, though.”

“Make it two, then,” he said. “And one of whatever she had.”

Gary waved a hand and two of the tall glasses appeared on the bar from below it. With another flick of his fingers, they half filled with a violently purple liquid. Too quickly for George to follow what he was doing, he mixed several more liqueurs together, bottles and flasks appearing and disappearing faster than George could keep track of, before the drinks were pushed across the bar to him.

As he watched, the purple contents began to glow and fizz up, then, with a burbly little _pop!_ , a glowing heliotrope ball of effervescence jumped from one glass to the other, then, after a second, returned to the first glass. George grinned, taken by it—it was a clever bit of magic, and he clearly needed to get out more if this was the sort of thing he could be drinking—but then Angelina elbowed him and asked, “Are you going to drink that whiskey with me, or what?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I hate to get between a Quidditch player and her drinking.” Raising the shot glass and clinking it against hers, he downed the Swott’s whiskey, feeling the pleasant burn as it slid down his throat. Angelina grinned at him and accepted another shot from the barman, which she tipped back into her mouth, and he drained one of the Fizzing Fountains. It seemed to keep leaping as he swallowed, and it tasted like a liquified mash of Honeyduke’s sweets. Not that he’d been expecting anything else with a drink that looked like that. His stomach gave a leap and he figured he’d better drink the other glass, so that little fizzy glowing ball didn’t want to go anywhere else.

“C’mon Johnson, get out here!” a voice shouted, before either of them could say anything else to each other. One of her teammates—George thought it was Smythe, but it was hard to tell through the strobing lights and the gloom and the buzz of alcohol—was gesturing at her from the dancefloor.

She laughed and set her empty glass down on the bar. “You coming?” she asked him.

“I don’t really dance,” he replied. “You’re confusing me with Fred.”

Glaring at him, she replied, “You arse, I most certainly am not.” With that, she grabbed his hand and heaved him away from the bar. Her strength startled him and he told himself that it was that, really, that got him out on the dance floor with her, surrounded by flailing arms and gyrating bodies slick with sweat; he was drunk, but he wasn’t drunk _enough_ for this. Fred was the one that had liked dancing. George—hadn’t. Except Angelina, in her low-slung jeans and black tank-top, _did_ , and suddenly _was_ , and his choices were to stand there like a prat, walk away like a wanker, or join her.

She’d let go of his hand to join her teammates, though she was still looking back at him expectantly. The smile on her face was impossible to walk away from and he shouldered his way towards her. She grabbed his hand and he forgot that he didn’t dance and just _did_ , feeling the pulse of the music deep in his chest and Angelina next to him, sometimes close enough that he could’ve slipped his arms round her and one time that she actually did; her arms briefly sliding around his neck. The longer he stayed out on the floor, the more natural he felt at it; surrounded by witches and wizards his own age, all of them moving separately and yet somehow together, was strangely cathartic in a way he hadn’t expected. And Angelina—Angelina Johnson was dripping with sweat and gorgeous and made his heart pound along to a beat quite separate from the music’s.

He thought he took her hand at one point and twirled her; ended up with his hand glancingly resting at her waist for a second or two—the flashing lights and whatever he’d drunk made it hard to remember what was happening from moment to moment, and what he only wanted to happen.

Finally, she leaned towards him and yelled over the music, “Shall we get another drink?”

“Definitely!” he shouted back.

Angelina shouted something to her teammates, still dancing wildly, that sounded like, “More booze!” The two of them stumbled their ways back to the bar and collapsed against it, Angelina’s shoulder resting lightly against his arm. “You _can_ dance.”

“I never said I couldn’t,” he pointed out. “Only that I _didn’t_.”

Giving him an exasperated smile, she remarked, “You wouldn’t dance with me at the Yule Ball.”

Alcohol and adrenaline were still humming through his veins. “Couldn’t risk fancying you, could I? You were with Fred.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t realise one dance was all it would take.”

If either of them had been less drunk, it would have been an awkward moment. “Everyone fancied you, Ange.”

He started to turn to order something more to drink, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm. “You didn’t,” she said, suddenly sounding much more sober. “You never fancied me.”

“You know, I was joking about it being _everyone_.” He’d never been more aware of a person’s touch through his sleeve in his entire life. “I mean, maybe a couple other blokes in our year; that Ravenclaw a year above us who asked you to Hogsmeade sixth year right in front of Fred—” She kept staring at him, and all at once the music was too loud; the lights too frenetic; the alcohol too sickly. “You said you’d show me Belfast,” he said. “How about right now?”

Her mouth opened, then she looked at her hand on his arm. The lights and music and alcohol thrumming through his veins made the moment stretch like toffee. Finally she looked up, met his eyes, and said, “Yeah. Yeah, let’s.” At that, she withdrew her hand, but only slowly, like she wasn’t sure she could. “I’ll tell the others we’re going—I’ll be just a minute.”

George watched her as she walked back into the melee of arms and hair and glowing wands, trying to keep her in his sight even after the crowd had swallowed her, and then, a voice came from behind him, “You _do_ fancy her, like.”

George turned to find the barman leaning against the bar looking at him. “I never said I didn’t,” he said, “not that I can really see what business it is of yours.”

Gary shrugged and refilled a drink with a point of his wand for a witch down the other end of the bar. “Och now, sure it isn’t. I only say anything because our lass Johnson there’s been sad as a cat stuck in an Antrim rainstorm for years now.”

“And?”

With a grin, Gary replied, “Cheer her up.”

Reaching into his pocket to pay for his and Angelina’s drinks, George said, “I wasn’t soliciting advice from my wise local barman.”

“I dispense it anyway,” Gary said. “Anyway, you’re no local.” He sent another drink flying down the bar, this one popping with gold sparkles. “I like Johnson. Hell of a Quidditch player. Nice lass. It’d be grand to see her happy.”

“I know,” George said. “To all of the above.”

Just then, Angelina pushed her way out of the crowd again and rejoined him. “Ready?” she asked, and then, waving to the barman, said, “Bye, Gary—save me a seat for next time, will you?”

“Count on it, Johnson.”

The night was cool but not cold as the door to Maebh’s banged shut behind them. After the frenzied sensory overload of the club, outside was a thick, woolly silence pressing in on George’s ears. The gas lamp-lit street was even emptier than before, and there were still small puddles in some of the joins between the bricks. When George looked up, though, he could see that the clouds were starting to thin, and that the moon was visible as a fuzzy white smear behind wispy clouds.

Angelina was shrugging on a zip-up hoodie to cover her bare arms and shoulders, and as she zipped it up, she said, “Thanks for coming tonight, George. To the match and out—” she waved a hand at the surrounding street, “—as well.”

“Wouldn’t have missed either,” he replied.

They began walking, and she led him through an arched passageway that ended in a brick wall. “Just like Platform Nine and Three-Quarters,” she said, and walked through. George followed her, and they found themselves standing on a small street behind some overflowing dumpsters. A tall metal gate topped with security spikes was swinging shut behind them. This street was paved with bricks as well, and across the way was a small, whitewashed pub with Irish above its door. Light and the chatter of the crowd inside spilled out the door as it opened to let a few patrons out, who lit cigarettes as they stood around a table outside.

Angelina headed past the pub and they shortly came out onto a wider street. A bus rumbled past, its sparse occupants spotlighted by the harsh lighting inside. “You know,” Angelina said as they walked, “there were security checkpoints here when I first started with the Bats.” 

“For what?” George asked, startled. Surely Muggles here hadn’t known about You-Know-Who?

“Terrorism. They call it the Troubles. City centre was deserted; you could walk round doing magic and chances are no one’d spot you. Death Eaters took advantage of the Troubles, there were loads of times the Muggles would blame a bombing on one of their terrorist groups, but it was really one of You-Know-Who’s mad followers blowing up a street full of school kids and pensioners out shopping just for the fun of it.” She looked angry for a moment. “It was sick.”

Someone came out of an Indian takeaway on the other side of the street, flipping off the lights and locking the doors. It was late. “It was the worst,” George said.

This was such an understatement, and yet such a succinct way to sum up that awful time, that the two of them looked at each other and snorted.

Their conversation in Maebh’s came back to him—his ill-advised comment that everyone had fancied her, his bumbling about why he never had. He couldn’t let that lie. There was, he supposed, a chance that she might have had enough to drink that she wouldn’t remember it, but that seemed like wishful thinking. So, because he needed to say it, and because he knew there wasn’t going to be a good time, he cleared his throat and announced, “It’s a sort of code, Ange.” The conversation he was continuing was at least half an hour old, but Angelina didn’t seem confused about what he was talking about. “Fred fancied you. I couldn’t.”

She looked uncomfortable. “I wasn’t looking for compliments—”

“No, I know. I just wanted to say that.” He risked a glance at her. “In case you thought—I mean, I dunno why you would, but in case you thought there was something…er, unappealing about you. To me.” After a second, he added again, “There’s not.” Then, he hastily went on, “Not that there’s any reason for you to wonder about anything like that…”

He was rambling, and the look she was giving him was more and more bewildered, so he just took a deep breath and finished, “And, you know, him being dead hardly helps that.”

“The code?” she asked.

“Right.”

“Hm.” They walked in silence for a moment, and then she glanced at him. “It’s sort of the same for me, you know.”

Did he know? He’d _assumed_ , of course—how could it be anything but awkward to develop feelings for your dead lover’s twin? Not that he thought Angelina was developing feelings for him. Not really. Merlin, what had been in that drink? His thoughts were all muddled and jumping around each other. He’d thought the Fizzing Fountain had referred to its little leaping globules of fizz, but maybe it was more for what it did to one’s brain. But…the way he caught her looking at him sometimes didn’t need to mean that, nor the fact that she’d wanted him to dance. For Merlin’s sake, they hadn’t even really been dancing _together_. 

Besides, it would have to be worse for her. He represented the possibility of replacement to her, in distorted appearance anyway, if not in actuality. That would be…problematic for her.

Anyway, he hadn’t seriously thought about having… _something_ …with her. Not really. Yeah, there was the way that he thought he felt about her, but feeling something, or…er… _thinking_ you were feeling something, wasn’t the same as _having_ something. He couldn’t. That unspoken rule that had held him back while Fred was alive was even more binding now that he was gone. But he couldn’t bring himself to stop being around her.

“Yeah,” she said. “There's this, like, guilt. Like how dare I care about anyone else like that.” She paused, then went on, “Sometimes I think that’s why I kept seeing men I didn’t really like. There was no chance of…betraying Fred.”

“I think Fred probably would’ve told you if he’d expected you to live in a nunnery if he snuffed it.”

With a humorless laugh, Angelina said, “Fred never thought he was going to snuff it. Neither of you did.”

“Yeah, well, at least one of us was right.”

They had come to a square with a large, domed building in the center of it, dark lawn stretching up to its marble white sides. Angelina navigated around it, holding her silence as they walked into and back out of the the pools of light cast by the streetlights. “And you’re _really_ off limits,” she finally said.

“What?” he asked. At least, he hoped he’d only asked it, as the word had felt more like a yelp as it’d come out of his mouth.

She gave him a sidelong glance. “The code,” she said simply.

“Right. Not that—”

“—I’d ever think about it.”

“Exactly.”

If there was anything unconvincing about this disavowal, George pushed it away. They’d both had a lot to drink, after all.

Suddenly, Angelina stopped. They were halfway between two streetlights, but her eyes were still shining. “I know where to bring you,” she said decisively.

“Yeah? Where?”

“Somewhere I’ve never gone with anyone else. C’mon.”

A few more minutes’ walking brought them to a tall, wrought-iron gate. Angelina tapped the bars and they obligingly groaned and curved themselves out of her way; she stepped through, motioned for George to follow, and the bars settled back into the normal position.

They were in some kind of garden. Even in the dark, George could see the expansive lawns and the flower beds which were probably, seeing as how it was July, in full bloom. But the dark cast everything in grey colourlessness, even where he could see the black shapes of flowers.

There was a building in the distance, which Angelina led them towards. “This is my favorite place in Belfast,” she said, her voice hushed, as she drew closer. It was a low building topped by a dome, and as they approached the door, George realised it was a greenhouse, metal-ribbed and Victorian.

She glanced around and slipped her wand out of her jeans, tapping the door and whispering “ _Alohamora_.” The lock clicked and she pushed the door open, grabbing his hand to pull him inside. The door closed behind them quietly and for a moment, they stood in the silence of the building. The humid air felt heavy in his lungs and he could feel the press of greenery around him and hear the slight rustle of leaves now and then, though he didn’t know what was causing the movement. Finally, Angelina murmured, “ _Lumos_.”

The bright flare of her wand blinded him for a moment but his eyes quickly accustomed to the dim light. Tropical plants crowded a small path that wound through the greenhouse and flowers, blood-red, pink, brilliant orange, and yellow, swayed within reach. The city lights were blurred through the thick glass, making a hazy smear of orange that didn’t reach to the footpath.

“I used to come here a lot,” she said, her voice hushed, muffled by the canopy of plants. “When I really missed Fred. I could be alone here. Even when there were other people around.” She was silent for moment, and George looked at her, dramatic shadows cutting sharp shapes across her face in the dim wandlight. “Watch.”

Her wand went out, and the two of them were plunged into darkness again. It had been enough time for the booze to have worn off, but George felt drunker than ever, standing next to Angelina in the heavy, humid blackness. He could hear her breathing; _feel_ her breathing, and even though the air was warm, somehow he could distinguish Angelina’s body heat. For a second, he felt something wild come up in him, something he couldn’t describe, the ache of _wanting_ without being able to put word or sound or form to what it was that you wanted.

A soft glow gleamed into existence through the leaves; a cool, purple-white orb that moved languidly through the air. Then another appeared, this one blue-white. Above their heads, three more winked on, and suddenly the little balls of light were everywhere. Fairy lights, dancing around them, the flicker fast sound of fairy wings beating just barely reaching George’s ears, until they were surrounded by drops of light, haloed by their soft luminescence.

He remembered that she’d been afraid to look at stars after Fred had died, because they’d too beautiful, she’d said. But she’d just replaced the stars with something else that was just as beautiful. Someone like Angelina couldn’t take out the stars. She could lose sight of them— _had_ lost sight of them—but she’d found them here, in her grief and loss. Even after a lifetime as a wizard, a lifetime of never knowing anything else, this was…amazing. Standing here with her, in this private place, in what felt like her heart, was incandescent.

They stood there for what felt like a long time, watching the fairies weave and dance through the air, and eventually, one by one, the lights winked back into the darkness, leaving just the two of them, alone. No—exactly the opposite of alone. The two of them, together, breathing and living and finding their way.

They stood there, side by side, hands touching but no more, and in a minute, or maybe a few minutes, George would break the silence and thank her. But for now, the moment held them, and he let it.


	9. Chapter 9

George had a nasty hangover the following morning. Funny, that—he hadn’t thought he’d had _that_ much to drink, but probably whatever had been in the Fizzing Fountain had been more sugary poison than sophisticated cocktail. Merlin, he hated to think he was getting too old for dancing and colorful, saccharine alcohol; he was only bloody twenty-two.

Though he hadn’t, on balance, been particularly sensible the previous night. Even knowing it was a work day—for him, at least—him and Angelina had stayed out for hours more after she’d brought him to the Botanic Gardens. He hadn’t been able to say good-night, he’d wanted to take her hand, he’d just wanted to be with her, and they had wandered Belfast for hours talking. And he barely minded the headache and the exhaustion and that dry, sandpapery feeling in his mouth because it had been worth it for those magical hours with her.

Not that the memory it was going to stop him from downing a headache potion as soon as he managed to drag himself out of bed. It felt like someone was casting the Cruciatus Curse on his temples.

The really amazing thing was that at the end of the night, when they’d both reluctantly conceded that it would be best to try to fit in a few hours of sleep before the sun came up too much (because the eastern horizon had already been growing light by that time), Angelina had said, “We should’ve been doing this all along.”

Tiredness had made him slow, so all he’d said was, “Doing what?” Not, in retrospect, one of his most articulate moments.

She’d waved a hand vaguely. By this point they were standing by the Belfast waterfront, watching the dark water of the River Lagan flow quietly by beneath them, but he didn’t think she was referring to their specific surroundings. “Just…be together, like this. You’re…” She’d stopped, looked at him; he’d waited, heart suddenly pounding much harder than it seemed like it should have been. Then, she’d looked back towards the river, before glancing at him out of the corner of her eye and finishing, “Guess I just enjoy your company, Weasley.”

Even this morning, it still made him feel stupidly happy.

Unfortunately, he really _did_ need to get up, get that headache potion down—maybe a Pepper-up Potion as well, if he’d remembered to brew any more—and get downstairs to open the shop. And then he needed to find a present for his favourite sister, as it was her birthday in only a few short days, and they’d all been invited round the Burrow for supper.

The thought came to him, suddenly, that Fred and Angelina had never had nights like the one him and Angelina had just shared. Their world had been too dangerous to spend the night wandering aimlessly, as there’d been rather an outsize risk, in those days, of encountering someone who’d had it in for blood traitors and any known associates of Harry Potter. What had they called him? Right, Undesirable Number 1. It was a strange thought, him having something with Angelina that Fred hadn’t.

And then, on the heels of that thought, came a more uncomfortable one. What he really wanted was to have something with Angelina that Fred _had_ done, and he’d a feeling that was somehow not quite on.

He wished, for the first conscious time that day, that he could talk to Fred. There’d be a million more times in the coming hours when he’d wish the same thing, but now he very specifically wanted to ask his brother what in the world he was supposed to do. Would Fred— _did_ Fred, wherever he was—care? Was the last thing he wanted, up on his fluffy-clouded paradise or wherever it was you went when you died, for his twin to fancy his girl?

A particularly vicious burst of pain spiked through his head, and he put that train of thought aside in favor of finally getting himself out of bed to find that headache potion. There was still the vague and quickly fading hope that if he just sort of ignored, or at least, didn’t act on, his feelings for Angelina, that they’d go away.

Eventually, his headache receded and his eyes felt slightly less full of sand and needles. Ron, even as unobservant as he normally was, noticed his tiredness before too much of the day had passed, asking as they both stood near the till, “You out late last night or something, mate?”

George had been surveying the shop, taking a simple, uncomplicated pleasure in how the shelves looked, stocked with his and Fred’s, and his and Ron’s, inventions. He loved seeing which shelves emptied fastest, where little pockets of space opened up, and imagining the laughter of whoever had brought those boxes home.

Rubbing a hand across his face blearily, George replied, “Yeah. That obvious?”

“Well, considering you were falling asleep in the stock room twenty minutes ago, I’d say yeah.” Ron raised his eyebrows. “Are you seeing someone again? I thought you were going to the Ballycastle match yesterday.”

“No.” Had he denied it too quickly? Not that Ron seemed to have noticed anything. “I mean yeah, I was at the match. Met Angelina afterwards.”

Mercifully, this got no reaction from Ron. If George hadn’t worked out all of the messy and confusing implications of his feelings for Ange, then deffo the last thing he needed was to try to explain what was happening to his younger brother. “Well,” Ron said, “if you want, you can have the rest of the day off. Verity and I can handle things here.”

Raising an eyebrow, George said, “I can have the rest of the day off, can I?”

Ron smiled hesitantly. “Wager I can say that now.” It sounded more like a question than a statement.

George punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Wager you’re right. I might take you up on that, little bro. I still haven’t got anything for our dear sister’s birthday.”

He knew he’d never take the whole day, but he could use the quieter midday hours in Diagon Alley. Anyway, he’d no idea what to get for Ginny, and figured a wander up and down the street would give him at least _one_ decent idea. Shame she’d put her foot down on continued merchandise from the shop. Said she was getting tired of Harry knicking half the box to use them on his fellow Auror trainees.

As he walked lazily past shops, he read the signs posted on windows. Owls and cats for sale, bagpipe lessons ( _Pipe like Gideon Crumb!_ ), the room above Florean Fortescue’s for let, and a slightly singed flyer advertising for Skrewt Walkers Ltd— _Your fiery friend will have a BLAST with us!_

Walking past Florean Fortescue’s always made him think of Angelina, ever since that day in March that he’d bought her an ice cream as a peace offering. Though that wasn’t saying all that much, as he thought of Angelina…well, more than he _didn’t_ think about her. As he stopped in front of Quality Quidditch Supplies to study the window display, he admitted to himself that most things, these days, made him think of Angelina Johnson.

He wished, again, that he could ask Fred what to do. He wished Fred was here so they could pick out Gin’s nineteenth birthday present together. But he wasn’t, and the hole in his heart ached, and he kept walking. Sugarplums? No, they couldn’t hold a candle to Honeydukes. Madam Primpernelle’s? Might send the wrong message. He paused in front of TerrorTours. Maybe Ginny would like a nice holiday. They were advertising a new Bigfoot camping tour to the Pacific Northwest in America. ‘Course, he’d have to buy a ticket for Harry, too, and he didn’t think he was quite ready to start funding overnights for his little sister and her boyfriend.

Turning into Diagon Alley South, George shot a fond look at Gambol and Japes. Him and Ron were slowly driving them out of business, of course, but he owed a lot to the place. They’d been—what, seven? It must have been a trip to Diagon Alley for Bill and Charlie’s school things, the first Fred and George had been allowed to accompany their mother on. Mum had been bringing Bill and Charlie to the second-hand robes shop, tutting that both of them had shot up over the summer, and George remembered the exact moment he’d seen the window of Gambol and Japes, bright, colorful, arresting. Both of their jaws had dropped open; they’d been transfixed, but Fred had had the presence of mind to tug on Mum’s robes and say, “Mum, Mummy, can we go in _that_ place?”

“What’s that, dear?” Mum had asked, then, following the direction of both the twins’ longing gazes, had said, “Oh, all right, but after we buy Bill and Charlie their new robes.”

It had been transformative, the moment they’d finally stepped inside Gambol and Japes. Nothing had prepared them for the idea that there were toys, more than toys, to play jokes on people, to professionalise pranking. They had not, George had always thought, ever really looked back from that moment.

It wasn’t right, Fred being gone. George felt for the emptiness inside him that had appeared when his twin had gone, and it hurt. Even if it wasn’t as sharp as it had been for that first year, it still hurt.

He sighed, and moved on from Gambol and Japes. Twilfitt and Tatting’s was across the street, and there was a pair of trousers in the window that he thought Ginny might like. The shop was the sort of place they never could have dreamt of buying anything from when they were kids. Now, George just smiled ruefully and hoped Fred, wherever he was, could appreciate how well him and Ron were doing.

 

* * *

 

Percy had wanted to save Mum the trouble of having two birthday dinners in August and had suggested combining his and Ginny’s birthday, but Mum had insisted they be separate. “Ah, well, you know Mum,” George said, as they sat outside after dinner, watching the sun sink lower and lower over the hills. A flock of starlings flew across the sky, birds swooping in and out to give the whole thing the appearance of an enormous, rippling blanket. The truth was that he thought Mum wanted to make sure each and every one of her children had at least one day when they felt the full force of her love, but he didn’t say it out loud.

Harry and Ron were playing chess—Harry was losing badly, as usual—while Ginny and Hermione sat nearby, ostensibly watching the game but in reality paying very little attention. Though, George had to give Hermione credit for her ability to multitask—she was pretty good at noticing when Ron took one of Harry’s pieces, and always ‘ooohed’ appropriately.

“Audrey couldn’t come tonight?” George asked Percy.

“No.” Percy adjusted his glasses. “She said she’ll probably have to work most of the night; a Welsh Green ended up in Newcastle city centre at rush hour. They’ve had to cordon off the whole area and they’re sure they’ve missed some people who saw it, so they’ve got Obliviators fanned out across two counties trying to track down everyone who needs their memory modified.”

Taking a swig of butterbeer, George grimaced and said, “Sounds like entirely too much work, if you ask me.”

At that moment, Mum came back outside, arm in arm with Dad, and his parents took the chairs next to Percy and George. George pushed two bottles of butterbeer towards them. “You’re all growing up,” Mum sighed, looking from Ginny and Hermione, to Ron and Harry, and finally at George and Percy.

“We all did a long time ago, Mum,” George said.

Bill and Fleur came out the door and joined them, baby Victoire bundled in a blanket and sleeping peacefully. As George watched them sit down, and Fleur handed Mum the baby, he just hoped all their kids wouldn’t have to grow up as fast.

Mum cooed over Victoire, who yawned squeakily and nestled further into her blanket, and then she glanced at him. “George, I thought you might bring Angelina around tonight.”

“Angelina?” he asked, in a stupid way that made it sound as though he’d forgotten who that was.

“You could bring her to Percy’s dinner in a few weeks,” she said, and though her tone was casual, just-a-suggestion, something to think about, the look she gave him was both pointed and curious.

He looked back up at the sky, blue fading to dusty purple now, and at the last few starlings straggling to join the rest of their flock before dusk fell. “I could do,” he said.

“I think that would be nice,” Mum said serenely, and turned her attention back to the baby. No one else seemed to think anything at all of this suggestion, and George had to remind himself that as much as it felt that he was, he wasn’t blaring his feelings for Angelina out to the world.

Well, he’d ask her. But he might leave out the fact that his Mum was clearly trying, in a way that was still mercifully somewhat subtle, to work out what, if anything, was between them.

 

* * *

 

She came to Percy’s birthday dinner. She came, and she fit in perfectly, and they laughed and took a walk while it was still light out and George felt something in him slide further from his control. Angelina made him happy, happier than he’d been in a long time, and he already sensed that he’d never felt about any other woman the way he felt about her. It was becoming futile to pretend that he could turn his feelings off, but he kept trying.

And meanwhile, the year was slipping by. The rest of August passed with a glorious heat wave that had everyone outside. Angelina invited him to her flat for a barbecue. “My father would never forgive me if I let weather like this go by without one,” she said. 

Alicia, Oliver, Lee, and Katie came as well (the no SOs rule was still enforced, though with Alicia and Oliver marrying within the group, and George and Angelina both SO-less, that only left Lee and Katie put out. At one point during the evening, Lee leaned over to George and said, “What’s up with you and Angelina, mate?”

It was a good job that he didn’t choke on the beer he’d just swallowed. “What?” he coughed. “Nothing!” The look Lee gave him was less than believing, so George grinned at him. “Why, thinking of trying your luck with her?”

Lee laughed. “Only for old time’s sake.”

The first of September came round, and George still felt a bit like he should be heading off to King’s Cross Station to board the Hogwart’s Express. The last time he’d ridden it, life had been so much simpler. Well, a bit simpler—they had all been waiting for Voldemort to make his move, hadn’t they? And after a summer at Grimmauld Place, with the members of the Order of the Phoenix flitting in and out, it wasn’t as though him and Fred had been insensible to the danger their whole world was slowly sliding into. Thinking of it, the two of them probably could have been a bit more decent to Snape. Not that he hadn’t been a git.

Still, though, when George thought about that last train ride, bringing him to his seventh year, the memory almost glowed golden. One last bit of childhood, one last journey to hold onto a world that was easy.

The last few weeks leading up to September the first were always some of the busiest at Wheezes; it was the time of year that they knew what would be big sellers, and this year just about everything was in high demand. As always, they could barely keep enough Skiving Snackboxes on the shelves, and they couldn’t breed Pygmy Puffs fast enough. The Polypills, George noted happily, were a big seller as well. Of course, the Muggle tricks never moved very quickly, but there was enough interest to make keeping them worthwhile. Besides, it was Dad’s favourite section of the whole shop. Him and Ron had once found him back there, long after the shop had closed, and had needed to practically drag him out.

But after the first, things quieted down. This was the time of year that they did the bulk of their brainstorming for their next crop of products. George found himself thinking, though, of Zonko’s—specifically, of buying out the old Zonko’s space in Hogsmeade and opening a branch of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes there. He kept remembering what Angelina had said to him about it, that it’d be a shame for there to be no joke shop in Hogsmeade once the next generation of Weasley kids started at Hogwarts. It was a bloody shame there was no joke shop there now, too. Without really meaning to, he had started to think about what a Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes: Hogsmeade might look like; how it would be laid out, what products they’d highlight there.

He still didn’t feel quite ready, but…well, maybe, after Percy and Audrey’s wedding…no, then there was Christmas, and it was always mad then between the shop and family and general Christmas cheer. Maybe after Christmas then, he’d put out feelers about buying the building. Of course, he’d ask Ron about it beforehand, even though he’d a feeling he knew exactly what Ron would say. His younger brother had a habit of emphasising how brilliant the books looked, and how they really should do something with the revenue surplus.

January, then. January was when he’d think about this. No—January was when he’d do something about it.

 

* * *

 

The day of Oliver and Alicia’s wedding dawned clear and crisp, perfect weather for whom there was no one more deserving than Alicia Spinnet. George closed the shop in honor of the event and gave Verity the day off; she’d joked, when informed, that she wouldn’t know what to do with herself for two whole days. Which made him think about how Verity had taken so few days off in the last four years that he could count them on one hand. She was the sort of person, in point of fact, that might be very good at running a second branch of the shop, should such a thing come to pass.

He set that thought aside as he got dressed for the wedding, putting on his dark purple dress robes. Mum always sighed that they clashed with his hair every time she laid eyes on them—probably why she’d bought him the new ones, come to think of it, but he’d save those for Percy and Audrey’s wedding. When the appointed hour arrived, he checked the invitation one more time, and Disapparated to Whitlaw House in Hawick.

Whitlaw House was prettily decorated with flowers that bloomed, closed, and bloomed again, and ivy that scrolled around lintels, growing constantly without ever becoming overgrown. George took a moment to study it as he walked inside—it seemed like the sort of charm that might come in handy for some product or another, and he made a note to get the name of the florist. Maybe Angelina would know.

There were more blooming flowers inside in the house’s foyer, and gold and pale blue-coloured paper lanterns bobbing near the ceiling. There were a few people milling around inside, but no one he recognised, so he continued on through the house, following the trail of flowers and lanterns to the Garden Room. The room was a blaze of light, with floor to ceiling windows that overlooked the house’s garden. At least one hundred chairs were set up, with more prettily growing ivy making its way along their backs.

An usher approached him. “Bride’s or groom’s side?”

“Er, bride’s, I suppose?” he guessed.

“Name?” the usher asked, sounding as though he was already tired of Alicia and Oliver’s dense friends not knowing which of the two they were closest to.

“George. Weasley, that is.” He wondered if Alicia and Oliver knew any other Georges.

The usher pointed. “You were right. Bride’s side.”

He sidled around the usher and took a seat, glancing around for anyone he knew. Angelina was in the bridal party, so he didn’t expect to see her until after the ceremony. Patricia Stimpson made her way down the aisle and sat in the row in front of him, smiling as she sat down. “Hi George,” she said with a small wave. The two of them made small talk for a few minutes as more and more people filtered in. Percy and Audrey arrived and were seated on the other side of the aisle. Lee and Katie walked in at the same time, with Morag MacDougal and Roger Davies, respectively, and sat in his row, while Ron, Hermione, Harry, and Ginny got there a few minutes later and arranged themselves in the row behind him, followed by Neville Longbottom, then Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnegan, and Parvati. She met George’s eyes, and he saw her look at the seats on either side of him—searching, probably, to see if he was here with someone. When he smiled at her, she waved and smiled back. It would probably be the right thing to do to talk to her later, even if it was awkward.

As the chairs filled up, it became apparent that most of the old DA had been invited and had actually showed up. George thought about it for a moment, then realised that Alicia was the first of the Army to get married. Well, they could all do with a marriage instead of a funeral. He wondered who’d be next.

Once the chairs were filled, Oliver walked down the aisle and took his place at the front of the room next to the registrar, looking extremely uncomfortable both to be wearing dress robes and to be the focus of so much non-Quidditch-related attention. He was staring fixedly at the door through which Alicia would appear, apparently trying to convince himself that he didn’t have one hundred sets of eyes on him.

There was a swish of robes and the click of shoes from the doorway, and then Oliver’s best man and Alicia’s maid-of-honour processed towards the registrar. George knew it was the bride whose beauty was supposed to awe him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Angelina, in long dress robes of cornflower blue with delicate gold filigree on the bodice. Her hair was all gathered to one side, her curls flaring out and spilling over one side of her face. She looked like she was trying, due to the solemnity of the occasion, not to grin—but she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

And then a low, excited murmur went through the assembled witches and wizards, and they all got to their feet as Alicia appeared. Oliver’s discomfort vanished when he saw her, as he seemed to forget that anyone else was there. And George couldn’t blame him, really. Alicia looked radiant. Whether she was actually giving off a golden glow or it was just a charm didn’t really matter—the brightness of her smile and her eyes could easily have lit the entire room. Once she’d arrived at the end of the aisle, everyone sat, and the registrar began the ceremony.

Oliver and Alicia barely appeared aware that there was a crowd of people in the room with them—they had eyes only for each other. When they were pronounced bonded for life, a shower of golden sparks rained down on them from the registrar’s wand. But George’s eyes were drawn inexorably to Angelina, and she looked as fiercely proud and happy as he'd ever seen her. Maybe some people would say Alicia’s happiness was reflecting off her, but George knew she was radiating her own.

Then it was over; Alicia Spinnet was Alicia Wood, and the bride and groom came back up to the aisle to applause and cheers. Angelina, on Oliver’s brother’s arm, caught George’s eye with a swift smile as they followed the couple.

Guests started to stand up and mill around, and Ron poked George in the shoulder, saying, “See you in there, we’re at a different table.”

“Aw, miss me, Ronniekins?” George asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Not a chance,” Ron replied cheerfully.

The wedding guests filed out of the Garden Room and into the larger room where the reception was being held. Large windows ringed this room as well, letting light spill in from outside. The same flowers-and-ivy decorating scheme prevailed, and the lanterns from the foyer were bobbing around the ceiling. Tables were floating into position, their tablecloths twirling around them in swirls of pale blue and gold, and one by one, chairs materialised at them. Ushers were on hand again to direct guests to their tables, and George soon found himself seated at his, with Lee and Morag MacDougal, Katie and Roger Davies, and an empty chair next to him.

Lee gestured to it. “Couldn’t find anyone to come with you, then?”

“I didn’t ask,” George said. “I like to attend weddings alone, anyway. Makes me look sort of mysterious and eligible, don’t you think?”

“No. More sad and pathetic than anything.”

George shrugged. “Well, a bloke has to try these things. Morag, it’s nice to see you, but I can’t believe you haven’t sacked this one off yet.”

“No, not yet,” she said in her Scottish burr, her eyes twinkling at Lee.

“Deserved that, I guess,” Lee said with a wince.

“A wee bit,” Morag said, grinning.

Roger Davies put an arm around Katie and said, “So, George—how’s business?”

Always happy to talk about Wheezes, George said, “It’s good. Brilliant, actually. We did a good business in August.”

“Not surprised,” Davies said. “Most of our year never had any pocket money because we were all buying your products.”

“Yeah,” George said with a grin, “and we appreciated it. Helped with our start-up costs, it did, driving all of you broke.”

“I’ll never forget when you and Fred left Hogwarts,” Davies said. “Legendary, it was.” Everyone else nodded appreciatively.

“I was so happy when that Umbridge hag was sentenced to life in Azkaban,” Morag said fiercely. “I know I shouldn’t be glad about anyone being sent there, but…”

Katie huffed. “Don’t worry, we all were. It might not be right but if anyone ever deserved it…”

“It wasn’t _necessarily_ that she was worse than You-Know-Who,” Lee began.

“…but then again, You-Know-Who was never Headmaster,” George snorted.

At that moment, plates and cutlery appeared in front of all of them. Menus were laid across all the plates, and the five of them took a few moments to study them before requesting their starters, which then appeared in front of them. They continued to talk over their meals, but George dropped out of the conversation for a moment to look at Angelina, who was sitting at the head table next to Alicia. The four of them—Alicia, Oliver, Angelina, and Oliver’s brother, were laughing about something. George felt the now-familiar lurch in his entire torso, like all his organs were trying to tango in opposite directions. She really looked beautiful.

As though sensing his eyes on her, Angelina turned her head and met his gaze. She smiled at him and mouthed, _I’ll be over soon._

The promise of her presence made him feel stupid, and he had to look deeply into his lamb confit and beetroot dauphinoise to hide the idiotic grin on his face.

Their meals were finished before long, and the plates cleared away with a swoosh and a pretty sparkle. Another nice effect, George noted. He’d never paid much attention to wedding charms, but clearly it was the same type of showy magic that him and Ron used in their products.

Then, with a _fwump_ and a rustle of fabric, and a huge exhalation, Angelina sat down in the chair next to him. “Oof. Thank goodness.” She was contorting her face. “I think if I smiled anymore my face would be frozen like that permanently. I must have pulled every muscle in my cheeks.”

“We wouldn’t want you to lose the ability to do that signature scowl of yours,” George said.

“I’m glad you appreciate it,” she retorted.

He grinned. “You know I have to ask—you didn’t do anything to invalidate the marriage, did you?”

She leaned to one side and stuck her arm under the table, working her shoes off her feet as she responded, “Ha, ha. I’m just happy I didn’t fall over in these shoes.”

Katie laughed. “Those barely qualify as high heels!”

“Qualified enough for me,” Angelina groaned.

Looking amused, Katie said, “This is the downside to your being fabulously tall. No need to wear heels, and sore feet when you do.”

“Ugh, you can have them,” Angelina said. “I should have brought trainers.” Surreptitiously, she looked around. “D’you think anyone would notice if I wore them? My dress is long enough to cover them, don’t you think?”

Pursing her lips, Katie said, “I think people might notice if a pair of trainers came sailing through the room when you Summoned them.”

With a sigh, Angelina said, “I suppose.” She slumped back in the chair, sighing, “Whoever knew a wedding would be so bloody exhausting?”

“For you, maybe,” Katie said. “For them, it’s the best day of their lives.”

Angelina smirked, leaned close to George, and whispered conspiratorially, “It may be the best day of their lives, but I still found Alicia sleeping in the loo after the ceremony.”

Katie hadn’t heard. “Doesn’t Alicia look beautiful?” she sighed. Both Davies and Lee looked slightly uncomfortable, as though weddings were a sort of sickness and it was catching. Maybe they were, George mused. Oliver and Alicia, they were the first of his circle, and there was Perce and Audrey’s wedding fast approaching. Morag was staring dreamily at the happy couple.

Angelina leant an elbow on the table and propped her chin up on her hand. “She’s lovely,” she answered.

Lee sank down in his seat a little and leaned over, muttering to George, “You’re lucky you’re here single, mate. Dunno what possessed me to bring Morag.”

“Lack of foresight?” George guessed. Lee just glared at him, and George didn’t bother saying that he just didn’t have it in him to pretend along with a relationship that wasn’t going anywhere. That was a big part of why he’d broken things off with Parvati, after all.

And speaking of…Miss Patil was currently alone at her table, as the rest of her dinner-mates were dancing. Seamus Finnegan and Lavender Brown were cutting quite the figure on the dance floor. Out there, it was harder to stare, and the scars on Lavender’s face were far worse than Bill’s. “I’ll be right back,” George said, and unthinkingly brushed Angelina’s bare shoulder lightly with his fingers.

She looked at him; glanced down at her shoulder, then to his hand, then finally back to his eyes. “Right,” she said. Was he imagining things, or was she trying to sound cool and casual, when something had made her feel anything but?

Parvati caught sight of him as he approached her table, and she stood up to greet him. “Hi, George,” she said, holding out a hand and giving him that enigmatic smile of hers. Still cute, he noted.

He shook her hand and said, “How are you?”

“Oh, fine.” Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, she said, “If you don’t want to make smalltalk with your ex, I won’t be offended, you know. You seemed to be enjoying yourself over there.”

“Well, it’s a bit like a DA reunion in here, isn’t it?”

“A bit,” Parvati said, laughing. 

“Padma here?”

“Yeah, with her girlfriend.” Parvati waved vaguely in the direction of the dance floor, and then she glanced over at his table and said, “I didn’t know you and Angelina were seeing each other.”

It was a real shame no one knew about his feelings for Angelina, because there was no one to appreciate how coolly he played this moment. “We’re not,” he said. “We’re just friends.”

“Oh.” It must have been convincing, because she looked a little embarrassed. “Sorry, I just thought…” But she trailed off, then smiled and said, “Never mind. How are you, George? Have you had a good summer?”

As awkward smalltalk with one’s ex went, it wasn’t the worst conversation he supposed he could have had, but all the same, he was glad, a few minutes later, when he felt he’d fulfilled his gentlemanly duty to speak with her, and he said, “It was good to see you, Parvati.”

She seemed ready to let the interaction end, as well. At least they both knew that he’d done the right thing by breaking the relationship off. He didn’t feel a single lingering twinge of romantic affection for her. Before he returned to his table, though, there _was_ one other thing he wanted to do.

He ambled to the foyer, hands in the pockets of his dress robes, and when he was standing in a spot clear of guests and staff, he murmured, “ _Accio_ Angelina’s trainers.” There was a moment of silence, and then, Angelina’s shoes came hurtling towards him. He caught them in both hands and headed back into the reception, where he approached Angelina, got down on one knee, and grandly presented them to her on outstretched hands. “Your trainers, m’lady,” he announced.

She laughed and grabbed them, slipping them on under the table. “Thanks, George—I could kiss you, you know.”

There was a break in the conversation at the table at this; at least, that was how it seemed to George, and it also seemed that everyone was looking at them. He felt himself going a bit red, and Angelina was definitely flushing darker.

“Now, or did you want to find a broom cupboard somewhere?” he asked, grinning. It was something that the George-who-didn’t-fancy-Angelina-Johnson would have said, and everyone would have laughed, knowing it was a joke. Including him. Which made the George-who-didn’t-fancy-Angelina-Johnson into a very different person, because George knew he wasn’t joking, not one bit.

Maybe Angelina took it as a joke, maybe she didn’t—in any case, she laughed too, and said, “We’ll see how I feel later; I think they’re bringing out the Firewhiskey in a bit.”

For a few more minutes, the six of them sat there, talking and sipping at the wine that had appeared on the table. Then, noticing that Alicia and Oliver were, for the moment, unmobbed by well-wishers, he said to Angelina, “Shall we go over and congratulate Mr and Mrs Wood?”

“Together?” Angelina asked.

“Sure, why not?”

“Are we here together?” Angelina asked, arching an eyebrow.

George put down his glass of wine. “Well physically we’re in proximity, yeah.”

She nudged him lightly with the back of her hand. “I’m joking, Weasley. Let’s go talk to them.” As they stood up, she remarked, “Funny how Oliver’s brother’s the exact opposite of him, isn’t it?”

“Is he? I’ve barely said two words to him; dunno how I’d know.”

“Oh, well, only he seems quite brainy.” 

George felt a weird stab of—jealousy? No, he was reasonable enough to see that there was nothing to that comment. Anyway nothing to be jealous _of_ , it wasn’t as though there was anything between him and Angelina. Reasonable, right. Which was why he found himself glowering darkly, suddenly, at Oliver’s brother, who was on the other side of the room, talking to Neville and a woman who looked like she might be another Wood sibling.

Shaking that stupid thought away, he said, “Give Wood some credit—it’s not that he hasn’t got brains, it’s just he’d rather play Quidditch.”

She grinned. “Yeah, true. Anyway, he’d do those charts before Quidditch practise—remember those?—and they took a certain amount of genius to understand.”

They reached the happy couple’s side at that moment, and Alicia exclaimed, “Ange!”

“Didn’t really have the chance to properly congratulate you yet,” Angelina said.

“It’s ok,” Alicia laughed, hugging Angelina tightly. “Food came first.”

George shook Oliver’s hand and said, “Congratulations again, Wood. You’re a lucky man.”

Oliver looked at Alicia, a foolish smile on his face. “Yeah,” he replied, “I know.”

“When are you leaving for the honeymoon?” George asked.

Smiling glowingly at Oliver, Alicia replied, “Tomorrow morning. Neither of us has ever even been out of the country; I can’t decide whether to be terrified or excited!”

“You’ll love Greece,” Angelina assured her. “The Oracle at Delphi, oh, and Oliver, you’ll especially love the ruins at Olympia. The early Wizarding games are brilliant; apparently there’s evidence for Bludger-esque balls there—”

“Oy, you’ve been to Greece?” George asked.

“When I was fifteen,” she said.

“I never heard about this.”

“That’s because you and Fred were too busy telling everybody about your holiday to Egypt,” she said breezily.

“You know,” George said, “if I’m not mistaken, it sounds as though you’re suggesting that Fred and I were a bit self-absorbed when we were fifteen.”

“You must have misunderstood,” Angelina said, a serious look on her face. “I definitely didn’t mean to imply it ended after you were fifteen.”

Oliver snorted. “Not sure I’d talk about maturing much beyond fifteen, Johnson.”

“I resent that, Wood, especially considering how much time I spent on my makeup for your wedding.” Angelina smirked at him. “Anyway, you’re gone for what, two weeks?”

Alicia was positively glowing at Oliver. Their arms were casually looped together; George wasn’t even sure they knew they were doing it. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, and when we get back, we’ve got to plan something for your birthday, Ange. George, think of where we should all go, will you?”

There was something about this that made George feel inexplicably warm. Maybe it was the inclusivity of it, the presumption that he would want to celebrate Angelina’s birthday with her and with their friends. A year ago, for Angelina’s twenty-second birthday, he’d made a brief appearance at the pub where they were all having drinks, but when he’d found himself alone with Angelina, their conversation had sputtered, and she’d mumbled something about getting another drink, and he'd let her go. He hadn’t quite realised what a hole her absence had created in his life.

“Sure,” he said. “Prepare to have your socks knocked clean off, Johnson.” She just shook her head and grinned at him.

Something caught Alicia’s eye and she gripped Oliver’s arm more tightly. “Oh—oh no, it’s your uncles, Oliver…look, you two had better go, you’ll be talking to them for the next hour if they get started.”

“We’ll get them to bring the cake out early,” Oliver said to her.

George and Angelina slipped away, making their way towards the dance floor, which was becoming a much more exuberant place with every refilled glass of wine and champagne. “Want to dance?” Angelina asked him. When he just raised an eyebrow, she laughed, “I know, I know. ‘You don’t dance’.”

“Though for you, Ange, I would.”

Her smile became more unreadable. “Good to know. But you’re spared this time. I'd really just like to sit down somewhere quiet and not have to act so cheery anymore.”

“Want some company?” he asked.

She looked at him, then said, “Sure.”

They walked outside into the little walled garden on the other side of the house. A few other guests were strolling through, but there was a stone bench that was unoccupied, and the two of them sat down on it. For a few minutes, they just sat quietly, but then, eventually, Angelina said, “I still can’t really believe it. Alicia, married. To _Oliver_. It feels like we just all won the Quidditch Cup together.” George didn’t say anything. If she didn’t mean to go on, well, their silences were never awkward these days.

But then, she added, “I guess in most of the important ways, though, it seems like a hundred years since that happened.”

“If it’s any consolation, you’ve aged really well.”

“Shut it,” she said, elbowing him and grinning. A skylark landed on a branch of a gnarled apple tree growing against the wall. It cocked its head at them, and then launched itself into the air, its song piercing the bright afternoon. Angelina’s face had grown pensive, and she said, “I suppose Fred and I probably would have been married by now.”

George hesitated, then said, “Probably. He was pretty keen on the idea.”

She watched as the lark flitted over the house and out of sight. “We would have been so young. We _were_ young. Even if it didn’t feel like it.” Then, she sighed. “I don’t know, George.”

The desire to take her hand seized him, but he resisted it. “We’re still young,” he pointed out, refraining from reminding her that she’d told him the exact same things a few months ago.

Smiling slightly at him, she said, “Maybe a little wiser, though.”

“Speak for yourself.” If he couldn’t take her hand, George decided, then maybe he’d just lean closer to her.

He did, so that their arms were touching. He could feel her body heat through the sleeve of his dress robes. And it might have been his imagination, but it seemed like she leaned into him; just the slightest increase in pressure. Neither of them acknowledged it. “Even if I’d brought it up,” she said musingly, “being so young, I mean, all we’d have ended up doing is bellowing at each other and not changing a thing.”

With a snort, George said, “You and Fred, fighting? Come off it. I’m sure you two _never_ had a disagreement.”

She smirked. “Yeah, well,” she said, “it was always…passionate between Fred and I.”

George’s gut twisted strangely when she said it. “Think I heard a bit of that,” he said dryly.

“I meant the fighting,” she said quickly.

With a grin, he said, “So did I.” Then, innocently, he asked, “What else is there to have meant, Ange?”

This time, she snorted, but didn’t respond, saying instead, “At the time I didn’t think it, but now I wonder if it wouldn’t have got a bit…exhausting.” She seemed to be watching him carefully, like he’d be offended that she’d admitted that Fred’s very cavalier attitude towards relationships had bothered her.

What bothered him was how he felt hearing her say that—hearing her suggest that she could imagine maybe a—a better life with someone else. No, not better. Different. Different and not in a bad way, and that being all right. It made his chest hurt with a mingled happiness and trepidation like he’d been punched; the happiness for hearing her say it, and the trepidation for _being_ happy at all. He fancied a woman that he’d never have had a chance with if his brother hadn’t died. Feeling pleased now felt a bit too close to being happy he was gone.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, her eyes narrowing nearly imperceptibly. “I didn’t mean—you know how I felt about him,” she said, and what could have sounded defensive just sounded sad.

George felt frozen in indecision for a moment. She’d been Fred’s girlfriend. Fred’s almost-fianceé-except-for-the-War. That wasn’t ever going to change. So the question was, could he handle that? There was no doubt in his mind that he fancied Angelina Johnson—maybe more than fancied her—that it had crept up on him and he’d never meant to, but he _did_.

Taking a chance, he reached out and touched her wrist lightly. “Nothing’s wrong,” he replied. “Just—you know, utterly flabbergasted to hear that Fred wasn’t the consummate gentleman.”

“Yes,” she said, her mouth twitching into a smile. “I’m sure that must come as quite a shock.”

Someday, he’d probably have to tell her how much better she made everything; that the empty space inside him didn’t feel quite so gaping when he was with her.

Angelina brushed her fingertips across the top of his hand. “We should go probably go back in. This cake was apparently a serious ordeal; Alicia said she couldn’t eat for an entire day because they tasted so many combinations of cake and icing.”

“Well, I’d hate for Oliver and Alicia to think we didn’t appreciate their sacrifice,” George said seriously.

With another smile at him, she stood up to go back inside, and he followed her. He’d tell her someday how much better she made him feel, but in the meantime, he had a funny feeling that maybe she already knew.

 

* * *

 

“Did you see some of those charms at Alicia and Oliver’s wedding?”

It was Sunday morning, and Ron had let himself into the flat, uninvited, and was now leaning against the table eating a piece of toast. “All those little sparkly effects—well, they don’t _do_ anything, but it’s just an extra little bit of fun, isn’t it?”

George looked up from the _Sunday Prophet_ , open to a profile of the winners of this year’s League Cup. “You thought so too, eh?”

“Guess I hang round you a bit too much; I’ve started thinking like you.” Ron tilted his head, trying to see what George was reading about, and when he worked it out, he scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Magpies won the league _again_. I keep making myself forget, and now you’ve gone and reminded me.”

Raising an eyebrow, George said, “Yeah, I think we were all gobsmacked it wasn’t the Cannons.”

“They weren’t the _bottom_ of the table,” Ron said defensively.

“Only because Banchory forgot to show up to a match. Hard to lose when the other team doesn’t bother playing.”

Ron glowered for a moment, then said, “You know, I really thought the Bats were a dead cert this year. Meant to say something to Angelina at the wedding last night.”

“Probably better you didn’t,” George said. “She’s not exactly taking it well.” This was true. When he’d seen her after her last game—it had been the following day—she’d still been raging intermittently, shooting hexes off at random, one or two of which he’d had to duck.

Shoving the rest of his toast into his mouth, Ron said as he chewed around it, “F’pofe Ginny dint eider.”

Crumbs landed on the table on George’s _Prophet_. As he brushed them off, he said, “I’m going to hope agreeing with that sentiment is harmless.”

Ron swallowed. “I s’pose Ginny didn’t either,” he repeated.

“At least she’s not using her Bat Bogey Hex on the opposing players.”

“Anymore,” Ron pointed out.

“She’ll tell you they never proved it was her.”

“Yeah, but come _on_ , we’ve all been on the receiving end of that. We know what it looks like.”

With a grin, George said, “I didn’t say I believed her.”

Ron pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. “So, anyway, I was thinking, we really should work out how to do some of those charms. I was even thinking, what if we could breed a Pygmy Puff that sparkled?”

George drummed his fingers on the table. “I like it. Only problem is, I dunno if the charm would stick from generation to generation.”

“We could ask Charlie if there’s something we could cross them with to get the sparkles.”

“I’ll owl him,” George said decisively. Then, as an afterthought, he added “Good one. I think they’ll be a big hit.”

At this, Ron looked pleased. It made George feel a little guilty. Maybe he should dole out compliments to Ron more often. It wasn’t like he didn’t deserve them. He had good ideas, Ron did. Funny, because when they’d been kids, Fred and George had never much thought so. But maybe Ron had felt overshadowed by them. Or maybe they just hadn’t noticed his good ideas.

“Listen,” George said, “what do you think about this for a new line—buttonholes that spray Stinksap—haven’t decided if it should be at the wearer or someone else yet—”

Ron’s face lit up with the challenge of a new idea. “We could do two varieties, Stinksap and, I dunno, something nice, flowers or sparkles or something—”

“Three varieties,” George said. “One more where you don’t know what you’re going to get.”

“We could do a whole wedding line,” Ron said, sounding a little awed at the possibility.

George laughed. “Bat-Bogey Bouquets, Steleus Centerpieces, Caterwauling Cake Toppers!”

“Wonder if anyone’s thick enough to use any of that at their wedding,” Ron said with a grin.

“I’ve learnt to never underestimate the inability of other people to misjudge what their friends and loved ones will find amusing,” George said. “But we could include hex reversals that would take effect after a suitably hilarious amount of time. Some kind of limited _Scourgify,_ you know. Stinksap’s always funnier when you’re not covered in it for your big day.”

It could definitely work. They’d start small, of course—the Stinksap buttonholes were a brilliant idea—and see where it went from there. He’d have to tell Angelina that it wasn’t exactly a hen and stag party line, but it was close. Though, come to think of it, if this wedding stuff did well, hen do products might not be the worst idea after all.

“And the good thing,” Ron said, “is that wedding season’s not till the summer, so we’ve got time to do proper testing on them.”

George looked at him for a moment, then said, “You know, Ron, you’ve got a real flair for business.”

Ron’s ears turned red. Possibly another sign that George didn’t pay him enough compliments—but then again, Ron would turn red if you told him he’d tied his shoelaces properly in a nice enough tone. “I like it,” he said, apparently at a loss for anything more descriptive.

“Yeah, well, I’m glad.” George hesitated, then cleared his throat and said gruffly, looking anywhere but at Ron, “Not sure where I’d be if you hadn’t offered to help out, if you want to know the truth.”

The initial splutter of unintelligible syllables wasn’t entirely unexpected, but then Ron took a breath, and, still red, replied, “Well…thanks. Think I’m more cut out for this than being an Auror, anyway.”

Glancing up at him, George asked, “You ever think of going back, finishing your training?” As he asked it, he realised with a start that he’d been _avoiding_ asking this question, as though…what? As though by asking the question, he’d remind Ron that he’d quit his Auror training to come work at a joke shop? And that Ron would, once reminded, pull up his stakes in Wheezes? It sounded daft but it was close to the truth, and confronting it now made George realise that he didn’t want to run Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes alone. Never had. It wasn’t meant to be run by one person, anyway—it had brothers at its core.

But Ron just shook his head. “No way. You’ve heard Harry’s stories—Auror training sounds grim.” He hesitated for a second, then said, “Seriously. I’ve never even thought about going back. I love Wheezes.”

With a grin, George said, “Glad to hear it. Er, not that I’d stand in the way if you had a change of heart about being an Auror, but…well, I’m glad you aren’t.”

Ron stuck his hands in his pockets. His face was still faintly red, but he looked happy, even if he was trying not to meet George’s eyes. This _had_ been a bit awkward, he supposed. Honest, emotional conversation wasn’t something George had ever done well. That was the thing with having a twin—you didn’t need to, because you already knew everything about each other. There wasn’t any need to say any of it out loud.

Of course, Ron wasn’t any good at it either, and he didn’t have an excuse. “Anyway,” Ron said briskly, “I figured I’d balance the ledger today. Save us having to do it tomorrow, you know.”

Flicking the _Prophet_ closed with a wordless and wandless snap of his wrist, George said, “Yeah, probably for the best. I’ve got some work to do in the laboratory.”

“Which reminds me, the Lurgy Lollies definitely aren’t doing what we want them to.”

“What d’you think I’m going to work on?” George scratched his backside absently. “Though—that particular unintended side effect gave me an idea for the next update to the Snackbox line after this one.”

“Rash Rhubarb and Custards?” Ron said with a grin.

“Well, it’s mildly encouraging that we both got the same side effect from them.” George stood up, grabbing his wand from the table and stowing it in his back pocket. “Might have to work on the name a bit, though.”

Ron shrugged. “At least you got an idea out of it. All I got was a lecture from Hermione.”

The two of them headed down into the shop. While Ron worked on the ledgers in the stock room, George snapped on the goggles that Charlie had given him for his birthday, lit a fire under his three-quarter inch cauldron (Percy would be proud that he knew them all by bottom thickness), and set to work determining why the Lurgy Lollies were causing an unfortunate rash in an even more unfortunate place.

It was easy for George to lose himself in an invention. Hours could, and very frequently did, pass without him realising it. Such was the case today, when the only thing that stopped him was the sound of the shop door opening, and Ron’s voice saying, “Yeah, he’s back here—hope he’s not Petrified or something, there _was_ an explosion a while ago, and it’s been pretty quiet since then…”

George turned in his chair to see Ron, with Angelina right behind him, appear in the door. “Hi,” he said, his heart lurching at the sight of her.

“Not Petrified, then,” Angelina said, more to Ron than him. Then she shot him a dazzling smile. “That would’ve been a bit disappointing.”

“Give me some credit,” George said. He pushed the goggles up onto his forehead and held out his hands, which were covered with a pair of dragonhide gloves. “See? Safety first.”

“Ginny made him wear those after all his fingernails fell off a couple months ago,” Ron informed her. That made her laugh, and George just shrugged in tacit admission of this fact. Looking at George, Ron said, “I think I’m going to head home.”

“Right, so Hermione’s, then,” George said. Ickle Ronniekins had been spending less and less time at his flat—not that George blamed him, as it was tiny, poorly heated, and located above Eeylops Owl Emporium. Come to think of it, it was poorly ventilated as well, and the odor of owl droppings was frequently overwhelming.

There was a time that saying something like this would have turned Ron an impressive puce color, but now he just shrugged. Something told George that this change heralded a proposal—not imminently, but he’d a feeling that sometime within the next year, Hermione would have an engagement ring on her finger. “See you tomorrow,” Ron said. Then he added, “We should have dinner again—you two and Hermione and me.”

Angelina and George glanced at each other. Just like a couple would, he realised, to gauge each other’s reactions to this question. “Yeah, I’d like that,” Angelina replied.

“Great,” Ron said. “I’ll talk to Hermione, work out a date.” He disappeared from the doorway, and a few seconds later, the sound of him Disapparating reverberated through the shop.

George stood up and stretched, hooking his fingers around the strap of his goggles and pulling them off. “Want to come upstairs?” he asked Angelina. Maybe he should have asked if she'd come for any particular reason—but then again, he was happy to see her whatever the reason, and he didn’t think she’d be shy about telling him why she was there.

“I could do,” she replied. She glanced at the potion bubbling away. It was a deep vermilion, and steam was curling off the top to roll around the sides. “That looks better than most of your potions.”

Taking off his gloves, he said, “You’ve got to brew a lot of sludge to make an omelette…or something.” With a flick of his wand, he cast a Shield charm around it, in case it wasn’t as stable as he thought it was. “It’s got to simmer for a few hours, anyway. C’mon.”

As she followed him out of the laboratory and up the stairs to the flat, she asked, “What is it, anyway?”

George glanced over his shoulder at her. “New Skiving Snackbox. We like to do a new one every year, you know, keep the Hogwarts professors on their toes.”

“I’m surprised they’re not using them at the Ministry yet,” she said idly.

As he opened the door to the flat, he gestured towards the sofa, and she plopped down on it. “Between you and me, I think the only reason Percy’s department isn’t using them is because they all know he’d guess what was going on.” She laughed, and he asked, “Any particular reason you came by? I mean, besides my charming personality and striking good looks.”

“You know,” she said, “saying stuff like that only works if you don’t _actually_ believe it.”

“Blimey, I’ve really been doing it wrong all these years, haven’t I?”

That got another laugh, and then she said, “No reason, really. I had new wrist guards on order at Quality Quidditch Supplies, and they came in today.”

“So it’s true, you just couldn’t stay away from here.” His heart did that hammering thing again. Like Angelina had never stopped by just because she was in Diagon Alley. But these days—well, these days it made him particularly happy. And she didn’t seem in a rush to get anywhere else. “You want something to eat or drink? Mind, I can’t guarantee there’s much edible round here.”

“Not at the minute.” With a sly smile, she said, “We’ll save that embarrassment for later, shall we?”

“Cruel, Johnson, cruel.” He sat down next to her, then said, “By the way, Ron wanted to offer you his condolences on the Bats not winning the League this year.”

Angelina made a face and drew one of her long legs up beneath her. This reaction was a vast improvement over their previous conversation on the subject. “I’m still annoyed we lost that first game against the Harpies. That one was winnable. Then we really _would_ have been in contention for first.”

“Well, next season.”

“Yeah. It’s not much of a break, I suppose. We’ll be playing again before I know it.”

There was a comfortable silence for a moment, the two of them together on his sofa, and then they started talking again, about anything and everything. When he’d invited her up he’d meant to entertain her somehow—have dinner, or play a game, something—but the hours started slipping by. It was a better afternoon than anything he could have planned. Not that it should have surprised him. Angelina had always been easy to talk to. There had been nights at school when she’d sat in the Common Room until late studying, and he and Fred had been—well, _not_ studying, doing anything but, really—and if they’d succeeded in distracting her into conversation, it could sometimes be hours before they’d remember the time.

There’d been a night towards the end of spring term in their seventh year, before they’d set off the fireworks but while they were planning it, that Lee had gone up to bed, leaving only the two of them and a drowsing Angelina in the armchair next to the fire. Fred had got up and caught her Transfiguration textbook before it slid into the flames, and the movement woke her up. “You can get in a few more hours pointless studying if you can keep your eyes open,” Fred had said, handing the book back to her and sitting on the arm of the chair.

“It’s not pointless,” she’d yawned. “Some of us want to _pass_ our NEWTs.”

George had propped his feet up on an ottoman and leaned back, his hands behind his head. “Come off it, Johnson, you’ll make the rest of us look bad. Star Quidditch player _and_ passing your NEWTs? Bit ambitious for one year, isn’t it?”

She’d flipped the book back open, but as she stared at the page, her eyes had started to go boss-eyed, and she’d promptly closed it again. “Have to do something with my life, don’t I? Quidditch is fine for school, but we’ll be out in the real world soon.”

Fred had just gaped at her for a second, a sentiment which George had quite agreed with. “Don’t be a twit,” he’d said to her, and Angelina had pursed her lips. “You don’t want some boring Ministry job, do you?”

“Yeah, you might end up working for our git brother Percy, measuring cauldron bottom thickness to the nearest thirty-second of an inch,” George had snorted.

“And thinking _that’s_ more important than not throwing your entire family under the Knight bus,” Fred had said darkly.

Angelina had glanced at him, having heard this, and much worse, about Percy. “Of course not,” she’d said. “But the League only has so many open spots a year.”

“So try for one,” Fred had said. “Easy.”

“Yeah, now maybe you can help us with _our_ problem,” George had said. “It’s bloody impossible to let space in Diagon Alley without meeting the landlord in person to sign the papers.”

With a snort, she’d said, “Oh, you’re the Weasley twins, I’m sure you’ll work it out.”

And, well, they had, hadn’t they? They’d got 93 Diagon Alley, and she’d gone out for, and won, her spot on the Ballycastle Bats.

George looked at her and, the memory of that long-ago conversation in his mind, asked, “D’you ever think about playing for England?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “You think I’m that good?”

“Come off it, Johnson. You know you are.”

She laughed. “Well, I suppose I _do_ know it.” For a second, she looked thoughtful, and then she answered, “I’ve thought about it. But I’ve never _told_ anyone else that I’m thinking about it.” She paused, then added, “Not even Alicia.” She hesitated, she added, “And honestly, Weasley, I’m not sure why I’m telling _you_.”

“My charming personality,” George informed her with a grin. “We talked about this earlier, remember?” She punched him lightly on the shoulder and he laughed. “So if you’ve thought about it, what’s stopping you?”

“Besides the fact I’ve not been asked?”

“Besides that. You know it's only a matter of time.”

There was a thoughtful look on her face. “I guess…well, I could tell you what I’ve been telling myself.”

“Which is?”

“That Quigley played for Ireland, and when they won the World Cup, Montrose snatched him up. It was hard for the team to lose him. I don’t want to do that to them.”

“But that’s not the real reason.”

Angelina held his eyes for a moment, then looked away. “No. The real reason is that I owe the Bats. Some days, going to practise was the only thing that kept me going. I like being part of a team. Not any more important than the others. If I played for England…” She trailed off, then shrugged. “It would just be different, and I’m not exactly there yet.” With a laugh, she added, “That probably sounds daft.”

“No,” he said honestly. “No, it doesn’t at all.”

She looked at him again, and then, impulsively, she put a hand on his knee. It was only for a second. “You’re really surprisingly understanding sometimes.”

With a wince, George said, “I wish you wouldn’t say that so loudly. The neighbours might hear, and I’ve got a reputation to keep up.”

That made her laugh, and they lapsed into companionable silence again. George wished she’d put her hand back on his leg. With any other woman, he’d take that as a sure-fire indication that she was interested in him. With Angelina, it was impossible to tell. They’d been friends too long, been in too many grubby situations—and too many changing rooms, for that matter—for any of those signs to be helpful.

But—even if it didn’t necessarily mean anything, he still wished she’d do it.

Then, she blurted, “There was never anything much between Aidan Lynch and I.” 

It was totally _apropos_ of nothing and took him aback, and for a few long seconds, he had no idea how to respond. George pretended that this was ancillary to anything. Everything. Why was she bringing this up now? Not that she ever _needed_ to bring it up—as far as he was concerned, Lynch was ancient history. “I figured, after you ditched him for what’s-his-name.”

“Yeah, well, there was nothing serious there either,” she said, sounding uncomfortable. “Or the next bloke I went out with.”

Raising an eyebrow, George asked, “There was a next bloke?”

“Briefly.” She met his eyes. “I just—oh, bollocks, I don’t even know why I’m saying this to you. The thing is, I always got the feeling you held it against me.”

“Ange, your love-life’s none of my business—” And if he was honest, he hadn’t let himself think about why her love-life had given him twinges of discomfort for months.

She ploughed on, ignoring him. “Maybe it was none of your business but I could tell it bothered you because you thought I was trying to replace Fred.”

Maybe at first. Recently it was because all he could think about was being with her. “And I know—”

“You were right,” she interrupted again, her tone blunt. “I tried and tried, and I thought maybe if I could feel something for one of them it would’ve made it worth it, but the fact is…” She hesitated and then caught his eye. He knew she was remembering when he’d accused her of tarting around; he wondered if _she_ was wondering if she’d just confirmed those words.

He smiled at her and tried to both put in and hold back everything he felt about and for her. Probably it made him look slightly batty, but something eased in her face. “The fact is?” he prompted.

There was a smile on her face. “The fact is, I can’t go out with other professional Quidditch players. Seems they’re not really my type after all.”

It was less of a struggle than he thought it was going to be to refrain from asking her what her type was. He supposed he already knew. He wondered if it extended to ginger-haired practical jokers who were missing an ear and a twin brother.

“Ange,” he began, “anything I said—did—whatever, it’s only because I’m an arse. You’ve never owed anything to anyone. Not Fred, and certainly not me.”

She shook her head. “That isn’t true. It’s…oh, I can’t explain. I certainly owed it to him—and especially you—to not…I dunno, bollocks everything up. I just keep thinking, maybe…maybe it would have been better, maybe it would have helped, if I hadn’t bloody run from the sight of you every time we saw each other.”

“Maybe,” he said. Then—sod it—he took her hand, squeezing it. “Still don’t think you owed it to Fred, though. Anyway, you probably needed the time.” He smiled at her. “It’s okay; I don’t hold a grudge _that_ long. Give it another five, ten years, and I’ll probably have got over it.”

Her relief was palpable, and she laughed at his joke. “Noted.” She was still holding his hand. “You know, it’s taken me some time to realise you don’t replace the people you lose. That’s not how it works, not at all. You just…move on and make your happiness another way.”

George stared at her for a long moment. “That’s the most bloody profound thing I’ve ever heard you say,” he finally said.

“I don’t imagine it’s a very long list. I was always better with a Quaffle than saying the right thing.”

“Yeah, well, still.”

For another moment, they held each other’s gazes and hands, and then that moment ended. She let go and leaned back into the corner of the sofa, looking relaxed and casual and not at all as though she’d just given him hope that this, whatever it was, could be… _something_. But looking at her sitting there, he suddenly found that he didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to do. Everything with Angelina was too complicated, too confusing. Merlin’s balls, he didn’t actually know if she was interested in him at all. That’d be exactly what he needed—to make a complete sodding fool of himself trying for a relationship with her when all she wanted was to be mates.

“Hey,” she said, “d’you want to get dinner together? Haven’t you mentioned an Indian takeaway you like just outside Diagon Alley?”

“You never have to ask twice about food,” he said with an easy grin, which she returned.

She stayed long past the time it took them to eat, until Diagon Alley was dark and quiet and she reluctantly said she’d better go so he could get some sleep, and he gallantly offered to walk her to the door.

“Good of you,” she laughed, as he joined her for the four steps that it took to get from the sofa to the door. Her fingers curled around the door knob, but she paused before opening it and said casually, “See you in a few days?”

“Yeah,” he replied. They hadn’t arranged anything, but somehow that didn’t seem to matter. It hadn’t mattered, actually, for months—most of the time, they just met up with no plans and ended up spending as much time together as they could.

“All right, then,” she replied, meeting his eyes. There was a long silence, and George wondered with a start if she was waiting for something. Or was _he_ waiting for something? But before he could work out which it was, she broke the eye contact, opened the door, and, with a swift smile over her shoulder, said, “‘Night, Weasley.”

There was a _crack!_ on the stairs as she Disapparated. Show-off, he thought with a grin, and made a mental note to tell her next time. Had to turn into thin air over the edge of the step, Angelina did, when most people kept both feet on a level surface during Apparition. Not him, of course, but then, everyone knew that the Weasley twins were show-offs.

George nudged the door closed and went into his bedroom to get ready for bed, even though he wasn’t tired. He should have done something while she was standing there. Problem was, he’d no bloody idea what that something should have been. This was idiotic—he’d never had any problems with women. Why would he? Charming, funny George Weasley—well, less so since he’d lost the ear and the twin, but there’d been Parvati, and that had been easy enough. Or rather, it had been _simple_ enough, because all Parvati had wanted was something uncomplicated.

This couldn’t go on, though. The time had come for desperate measures. 

George took a deep, determined breath. The time had come to ask for advice.


End file.
